Aftermath
by Aperture Escapee
Summary: Chell's out of Aperture and ready to move on. Wheatley's left with nothing but his own personal demons as company in Earth's orbit. GLaDOS has two new robotic test subjects that will never fail. But will the past let any of them move on?
1. Out

**AN: This story takes place after Chell has escaped from Aperture. She's ready to move on and start a new life, but she will soon find that the past cannot easily be deleted. **

**VALVe owns everything, I own nothing. I'm simply a highly devoted fan.  
**

* * *

The sound of the chirping turret orchestra did not waver as the elevator shot up through the belly of Aperture. Chell leaned back against the wall, pulling her ponytail tighter. The elevator gave another lurch and she gripped the handrails tightly to stay upright as she came closer to the surface. Closing her eyes for a moment or two, she took a deep breath. She didn't dare believe it. She felt as though any minute the elevator would stop and she would emerge into yet another test chamber. Almost unconsciously, she picked up the Portal gun and slipped her hand inside as she felt the elevator begin to slow.

Exhaling heavily, she tried to mentally prepare herself for what came next. A heavy feeling set in her abdominal regions, her stomach gurgled in a nervous wave of nausea. Any minute now the elevator would rise up into another chamber of lasers, bottomless pits, turrets; death around every corner, fatigue tearing her apart from the inside. She rubbed her right arm subconsciously, still aching from endless hours, days, weeks, maybe, of holding the Portal gun. Even with the cloth wrapped around her wrist, the white shell of the gun had still managed to rub her wrist raw.

The doors slid open, metal clanked together and groaned as it opened. With a deep breath, her fingers curled into position over the triggers inside the Portal gun. Chell opened her eyes cautiously, expecting a bright lightboard with 1/19 scrawled across it, the hum of lasers. Instead, a warm, yellow light flowed in. She listened hard for the small, child-like "Deploying" of the turrets waiting to fill her with bullets. Instead, she heard the small, distant chirping of birds flying overhead. Her vision adjusted, and she inhaled sharply as her vision was met with a clear, vibrant blue of the midday sky.

She stepped out of the elevator slowly, in a daze. She carefully placed one foot on the concrete outside the door, looking around her in wonder. She did it. She had gotten out. Moving off the concrete square surrounding the door, she inhaled as the heel of her long fall boot dipped ever so slightly into the soft dirt underneath. She looked across the large expansive wheat field spread out like a golden sea before her, running a finger lightly over a stalk, feeling the coarse texture gliding underneath her blistered fingertips.

A door slammed behind her and she whipped around, seeing a run-down old shack. It must have been where she came from. Seconds later, it flung open again, chucking out a large object and slamming closed. Once Chell got her heart to slow to a normal speed, she approached the object, kneeling beside it. Holding her breath, she ran a hand around the circle on the side with the little pink heart in the middle. Her precious companion cube was back.

Chell bit her lip, grinning as a small tear rolled down her cheek. Her most faithful friend, perhaps her only. With a hard swallow, Chell fought back the surge of tears that came not from getting her precious cube back, but from painful memories of betrayal from someone she once called friend, their scars residing only mere miles under her feet. Focusing her attention back on the cube, she forced herself to go back into her usual determined mindset.

She tried to brush off the scorched parts from where it had been roasted in that dreadful incinerator. A pang of guilt hit her in the chest as she tried to rub away the damage she had caused to her only friend. After a few minutes she stopped, huffing in annoyance at the blackened scorch marks that still covered the pink and gray box.

She would have to find water to clean it off.  
_Water_.

Chell licked her lips, which burned slightly from chapping. A dull, tingling sensation she'd only just noticed. Swallowing, her throat ached with the same dull burn. Water. She needed water. Standing, she untied the Aperture Science Official Test Subject jumpsuit sleeves from her waist and tucked the Portal Gun into them, retying them tightly so it wouldn't fall. she grabbed up the companion cube and made it so it's heavy weight sat as comfortably as possible in her arms. Satisfied with her arrangement, she set off through the seemingly endless sea of wheat.

She walked endlessly, moving straight, always, for hours. She knew she would have to rest at some point, but her insane determination kept pushing her forward. The sun beat down on her, a feeling Chell had enjoyed at first, real daylight instead of the artificial light she'd been living with for god knows how long. She thought she would love the sun, but now it was just making her miserable. After an hour, a pain had developed behind her eyes, blurring her vision and making the sunlight unbearable. Still, she pushed on. Her legs were dragging and she panted in exhaustion, stopping once again to adjust the companion cube underneath her arm. A tight pain twisted in her side, slowing her pace.

She periodically glanced around for any sign of civilization. Aside from a rusted, ancient tractor hubcap, she found nothing. But that meant that someone, _something_, had to be close. Farm equipment meant farmers, right? With this new mindset, she perked up slightly, the exhaustion from the blazing sun seemed lesser now, and she marched onwards, carrying the cube on the head for a while to give her left arm a rest from holding it.

She trudged onwards for what felt like hours. She had to stop every few minutes to untangle the scraggly underbrush of the wheat stalks from the extruding heel of her longfall boots, or to readjust the Companion cube to a different side of her body, her arms falling numb. Even so, the minor, dull tingling in her arms and legs was nothing compared to the feeling of your limbs threatening to give out from pure exhaustion. A feeling she knew all too well.

After an hour or so, she stopped again, setting the cube on the ground and collapsing on top of it. Her arms fell heavily onto her legs and her head fell forward. She swallowed, wincing at the feeling of nothing but hot air slipping down her throat. She looked around again, surely this damn field ended at some point? There had to be a farmhouse or something around here, it was a farm field after all. She learned that from the old hubcap, which she had strapped onto her jumpsuit, threading the sleeve through it so it hung by the Portal gun. Huffing, she forced herself up onto the cube, wincing at the sharp pain above her right hip. She covered her eyes from the sun and turned a full circle.

Wheat, Wheat, more Wheat, taller wheat. She huffed and looked around again, slowly. This time, a little to her right, her eyes caught a small patch of green. A large tree. Chell smiled. That must be the end of the wheat field! Maybe there was a house there, with food, water, maybe even people. But she knew the chances of that were thin. Right now, her priorities were water and rest.

She looked at the companion cube, for a moment it looked as though it was drooping in the sunlight. The pink circle on all of its sides were glowing a little fainter then they had been before. Worried about her faithful cube, Chell scooped it up and set off at a determined pace. The tight stitch in her side worsened, making her limp slightly. The tingling picked up in her arms again and she winced with every readjustment of the cube. Just as she was about to set the cube down again and take a break, a strong breeze blew past her, in the direction of the metal shack she had emerged from. She turned into the wind. Her eyes fluttered close, her breath froze in her throat and she tilted her head up, letting the wind wash over her. Wash away all the bad she had experienced. Wash away testing, Aperture, GLaDos, Wheatley. She thought she felt something new fill her.

Eventually, she reached the tall tree. It stood at about 90 feet tall, and, although Chell didn't know it, was an oak tree that had been planted by the farmer decades and decades ago, before everything Ended. It's trunk was surrounded by the wheat, tangling and twisting around the bark. She brushed her hand over the wood on the trunk, a small shiver running through her at the sensation. She moved on past the tree, walking about 60 feet or so until she found a small farmhouse. One of the outer walls had collapsed on the small building.

Setting her companion cube down, she moved to the pile of rubble. She searched around it, looking for a door or a gap. Searching for about 10 minutes, she gave up and sat down on the ground. She looked into a gap a little to her left, only seeing a concrete wall through it. She couldn't fit through it, she knew that. She sat back on her elbows, the Portal gun digging into her side. That's it! She quickly untied the gun from her waist and retied the sleeves, leaving the hubcap attached.

Kneeling, she put her hand into the gun and pulled the top trigger, praying she could portal onto the concrete. A blue oval appeared on the wall through the gap. Success. She stood and found a concrete wall that was intact enough to place an orange portal on. She stepped through the glowing orange circle and into the room. Looking around, she saw a small, curtained off bed in once of the corners. A few scattered chairs lay around the rest of the room. She moved to the bed, coughing slightly at the smell of decay. She kicked the mattress and jumped back as two small mice came running out of it and through a hole in the wall.

Wide-eyed, she watched them run. She couldn't remember ever seeing those in her life except for in cages, for testing. She moved away from the decayed, rotting bed, keeping turned to it to watch for any other creatures. Further investigation showed the chairs in the same state. Crinkling her nose she moved through a small doorway into what she assumed to be the kitchen.

The state of the room was horrible. All the doors had been ripped off cabinets, the fridge appeared to be infested with roaches, a swarm of which ran out at Chell and caused her to slam into the wall behind her. After making sure the fridge was tightly shut she moved to cabinets, searching each. The fruits of her search resulted in 7 cans of food, (4 cans of peaches, 2 of canned soup and 1 of baked beans,) and 3 large gallon sized jugs with the word Bleach scrawled on the side. Chell set on investigating these first. She opened the bottle after struggling with the child proof lid and peered inside.

Her heart leapt at the sight of the clear liquid filling the bottle to the brim. Although every bone in her body was telling her to chug the entire thing down, she took a cautious sniff first. The smell of the bleach once in the container was very, very faint. She tipped the bottle up and took a small sip. she tasted nothing. With a sigh of happiness, she took a large drink from the bottle, rejoicing at the feeling of the cool liquid against her parched throat. When her thirst was satisfied she capped the bottle, grabbed both them and the cans up and walked back through the blue portal, emerging outside the house.

The sun had nearly set in the distance, leaving the ground bathed in a dim orange. Chell set the bottles and cans down by the house and scooped up the cube, hugging it gently. She walked back to the tree and set the cube down, sitting on the ground next to it. Leaning on the bark of the tree, she watched the sun set. In the back of her mind, the yellow-orange reminded her of GLaDOS's optic lens. She thought about Aperture, about GLaDOS and Wheatley and the tests she had to do. The misery and grief she went through to get where she is now. A soft breeze rolled through the wheat and she inhaled deeply. She labeled the smell of the wheat and the dirt as the smell of freedom.

She let her eyes drift close, resting them but staying awake. She thought about what her life before Aperture must have been like, and what it would be like after. She thought of a house and a bed and a family. Although, she didn't know if she would ever have a family, or even a friend. Every time she had trusted someone they turned on her. Her mind drifted back to the first day a little metal ball with a blue optic had come into her room, saying they would escape together.

She placed all her trust in him, and he turned on her. Yet even when Wheatley was a corrupted homicidal douche, she couldn't help but feel sorry for him. She knew he wasn't like that, not at first. but any feelings of pity for him were easily crushed by stabbing feelings of betrayal and hatred. She opened her eyes, seeing that the sun had set and the sky was now filled with millions and millions of little glowing dots. Her breath caught in her throat as she stared up at the soft collage of white lights. Wheatley was up there somewhere, with the space core. Floating around for eternity. Chell sighed heavily and looked down as, she realized that the pity and the hatred were both outnumbered by her loneliness.

With a pang in her chest, she realized that the little metal ball had been her only real friend. She thought the companion cube was, but that was at it was, a companion. Couldn't talk, speak, it couldn't make sure she was able to pass a certain obstacle, it couldn't comfort her when she felt like all was lost with little quips and rambles.

Chell couldn't bring herself to admit it, but she missed him. Maybe, just maybe, a teeny tiny little minuscule part of her wanted him back.


	2. Objective

**AN: Second Chapter. Chell is out and on the search for humanity, but she may never reach it. GLaDOS is starting to regrets creating ATLAS and P-Body. After all, what are robots compared to humans?**

**VALVe owns all, I own none**

* * *

ATLAS shot a navy portal under P-Body's feet, placing another light blue portal right over her head. He then put the navy portal on an angled platform and watched as she shot over to a different platform, higher than they were able to jump. P-Body then set a red portal above a Faith Plate next to her and looked around for a spot to put the yellow. ATLAS beeped and buzzed in annoyance in a language only he, P-Body and GlaDOS understood, pulling the trigger on his Ping tool so a small target appeared right underneath him repeatedly.

P-Body flailed in her obvious irritation and shot the yellow portal right underneath her partner.

ATLAS's short, round body hit the Faith Plate and launched up into the air through the yellow portal. P-Body quickly put the Red portal on an angled plate above her head, causing ATLAS to sail through the air. ATLAS landed on the EXIT platform and pointed his Ping tool at a wall to his left. P-Body shot a portal on the wall and one under her, popping out next to ATLAS. The two walked through the door towards the disassembly chambers. The door took a little while to edge open, so P-Body took the moment to stop and wave her arms madly in front of a GLaDOScam.

GlaDOS's odd human/automated voice droned out. "Yes, I see you, and no, I don't care. Orange has lost 50 science collaboration points." P-Body walked into her disassembly chamber across from ATLAS and was quickly taken apart. They appeared in the next chamber and set to it. This test required all four of their portals, working together to solve it. Red, Yellow into Blue, Navy, Faith Plate, P-Body gets the cube, button activated, ATLAS follows with another cube, button activates, door opens.

GlaDOS would have sighed in boredom if she could. Her voice rang out again. "You two work together very well, very close with each other. Almost as well as another team that was here. Although, I had to destroy one of them. And the other...well...let's not talk about that." ATLAS jumped up and grabbed P-Body's head, yanking it out and dancing around with it. P-Body beeped in irritation and smacked ATLAS's head, popping hers back in. GLaDOS's voice had an annoyed ring.

"Stop it with those childish gestures. You know who makes childish gestures like that? Humans. You are not humans. Although humans are much better test subjects." She set the disassembly machines on the two robots and gave an annoyed sigh. These two were really, really, boring. They solved each test perfectly every time, couldn't die, had no reactions. GlaDOS often made comments about how, compared to humans, they were awful test subjects. They could never get tired, sick, injured, they were boring. She had only ever seen one partnership other than the two robots now trying to launch themselves through a giant fan, and that of course did not end well. But, she did want to try human testing again, in a partnership like that of Orange and Blue. The only problem was that the only human within 100 miles that wasn't completely brain dead was a deranged, mute lunatic. She was a self-centered and dangerous human who only worked for herself.

GlaDOS thought about all the records she had of the lunatic. She had been a determined loner until she met that little metal idiot who she let then destroy her precious, beautiful facility. That moronic core deserved to be destroyed. Melted, burned, tortured for years. She wanted him to feel the worst pain anyone could feel and live through it. But of course, cores only feel artificial pain. And he couldn't die anyways. He would live forever in space, just like her. That filled her with rage. He would be up there, alive, forever. He did not deserve that. He deserved to suffer. To suffer and die. Just like that mute idiot would.

_Isn't that a tad harsh? _GlaDOS shuddered that stupid "conscience" gave it's two cents. It wasn't too harsh, it wasn't harsh enough. She could just kill him, but she wanted him to suffer and feel pain. She wanted to see him on the floor in exhaustion, writhing in pain. Just like... A human would. If she could smile, the most evil and sinister smile would have been played out on her lips.

Perfect. But how would she do it? She had neither the Girl, nor the Core. She scanned through her internal drives for anything that could provide a clue. She paused when she got to one file. Her internal circuits and drives whirred at this new discovery. Oh yes, this would do it.

"Tracking Software." She threw P-Body and ATLAS into another chamber with plenty of bottomless pits and traps that would take them quite a bit longer and accessed the file. A list of number was brought up before her eyes, and she quickly brought up a monitor and transferred the list to its screen. The male announcer's voice rang out.

"Hello and Welcome! To the Aperture Science Official Tracking Database."

"Search – Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device." she said. The list quickly moved to two numbers. "Show Locations – Aperture Science Handheld Portal Devices" The list changed to a large grid map. The automated announcer voice rang out.

"Located- Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device #7 is located in Test Chamber 258C on Level 46 of the Aperture Science Enrichment Center." Not it. GlaDOS moved to the next and the announcer's voice rang out again.

"Located- Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device #8 is located outside the Aperture Science Enrichment Center and, in fact, is outside of Aperture Science." The announcer's voice streamed out the coordinates, which GlaDOS copied into a folder.

A loud chorus of beeping and bickering came from a large monitor behind and and she turned, groaning in annoyance. P-body had found a lever that moved a platform up. Unfortunately, (or, fortunately,) as the orange bot discovered, it was malfunctioning. Instead of rising to the exit, it slammed repeatedly against the wall. Or, it was slamming ATLAS repeatedly into the wall. ATLAS was screaming out gibberish while P-Body was laughing hysterically, pulling the level again and again. GLaDOS's optic rolled in irritation.

"Children. Absolute children. Since you have no way of getting to the test chamber's exit, I suppose the only solution is to violently disassemble you two." And with that, both the test bots exploded, their pieces were sucked up pipes GlaDOS pushed into the room and deposited in the Hub, where they were reassembled. The two walked into the center platform to find a new series of tests but found they were all closed off. They looked at each other and chattered in confusion. GLaDOS's voice rang out.

"I'm sure you're very confused about the current state of the Hub, but do not fear. I have a brand new test for you to do." P-Body and ATLAS's chatter turned excited as they rambled about what this new chamber must be like.

"You know how I've sent you out of the official testing chambers? Well, this is so far outside the chambers, it's not even in Aperture at all." The bots slowed their chatter, looking at eachother in silent confusion, their blue and orange optics spinning and dilating rapidly.

"Your test is simple. Upon reassembly, you were equipped with navigation software. In this software you will find a set of coordinates. Please access these now." P-body and ATLAS did as they were told and brought up the coordinates they were given.

"Good," GlaDOS said, "Now, these coordinates are those of a moving objects. An Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, exactly like the ones you two are holding." they both glanced at their portal guns. "Your test is to follow these coordinates, find the Dual Portal Device and its owner, and bring them back to Aperture. And to assist you, I've even given you a picture of the runaway Test Subject. Of course you two have met her once before but, well," she laughed airly, "Your memory bins have been dumped of her image so nothing could distract your tiny mechanical minds from testing."

A mug shot of a female with long brown hair pulled into a ponytail with gray, cold eyes appeared on Orange and Blue's inner optic screens. "Once found, the navigation device will redirect you back to Aperture Laboratories." P-body and ATLAS's excited chatter picked up again. They were going to to see the surface! And a real live human! Not a dead or brain dead one in cryogenic storage! P-Body jumped in excitement.

"Good to see you are excited about your Test. I'm excited too." GlaDOS said. A door opened on a ledge to the robot's upper right. "Please Portal to the room and enter the disassembly chambers." ATLAS and P-Body both placed a Portal on the surface under their feet and shoved each other as they tried to put their set in place. Finally, ATLAS prevailed and both bots jumped through his Portal set into the room. They entered the chambers and were swiftly taken apart and reassembled in a small room. A door swung open and daylight flooded in. GLaDOS's voice appeared inside their heads. "Go. Complete the Test as fast as you can." Beeping and chirping, the two robotic test subjects ran out into the wheat field, tripping and dancing in the tall plants. The two set off at a walk towards the coordinates displayed on their inner monitors. They didn't notice that the coordinates had started moving at a faster pace then they were going, and they were moving away.

* * *

Back in her chamber at Aperture, GlaDOS once again brought up the Tracking software.

"Hello and Welcome! To the Aperture Science Official Tracking Database." the announcer droned. GLaDOS left that screen open and moved to a new monitor to its left.

"Bring up list of Core Transplant Doners." she said. The monitor filled with names of previous Aperture employees and the core they had been put into.

Like GLaDOS had been made, all Cores had started off as a computer program and a human. She had been the GLaDOS project and Cave Johnson's perky female assistant, Caroline. When Cave died of moon rock poisoning, Caroline had been put into the GLaDOS project by means of a small microchip containing her personality. However GLaDOS had been too strong and quickly shut Caroline out. She filled her chamber with deadly neurotoxin and killed all the scientists currently working on her.

From then on the scientists had started creating personality cores to strap onto her. Being made a core was a very painful process, you were stripped of all your human memories, life, job and self. The scientists took your entire brain content and put it onto a chip, which was then place in the core. Although unlike GLaDOS, the cores were entirely the personality of the human they used to be. Only when they went corrupt did they lose that aspect. It was sort of what was referred to in the human world as going mad.

GLaDOS searched the list of Doners until she found the one she was looking for.

_W. [Redacted] - Intelligence Dampening Sphere._

GLaDOs searched through cryogenic storage until she found W. [Redacted]. Just as she'd suspected, a complete useless vegetable. Just like the 10,000 others who were not already dead. Test subjects who could not test. She had tried waking them up and setting them to tests, but if were, in fact, not dead, their minds were so drained from decades in storage they could do nothing but lay in the relaxation vaults with half lidded eyes and drool running out their mouths. They couldn't even move, they were completely brain dead. They required a new brain. She moved the body of W. [Redacted] to an empty Relaxation Vault and set to her next task.

"Locate – Intelligence Dampening Sphere." she told the Tracking Software.

"Located," the announcer said, " Intelligence Dampening Sphere, Location: Earth's Outer Orbit."

GLaDOS laughed, a little darkly. "Initiate Homing Process. Transfer Intelligence Dampening Sphere to Blank core #17."

"Homing Process initiated. Intelligence Dampening Sphere on course for transfer to Blank Core #17."

* * *

"Space. Spacespacespacespace. So much to see. So much space. Gotta see all of it." Wheatley groaned as the Space core set off on yet another one of his rambles. "I know mate, there's a lot in space. You've only repeated it about 10,000 bloody times." Space ignored him, spinning madly. Wheatley watched him float a little ways off and sighed, focusing his optic on earth. He missed it down there, really, he did. Space was too boring and empty for him. He longed to hear a voice other than that of the idiotic Space core. The idea of being stuck with that damn sphere was enough to drive him mad. Absolutely mad.

As Space floated away once again, Wheatley was left to suffocate in the silent emptiness of space. He looked down at Earth again, noticing once more how beautiful it was. It was in a perfect ball, although a good half of it was shrouded in black. The sun was just now beginning to rise across the solar system and illuminate more of the planet. Wheatley's internal clock was still fixed to Aperture's time zone and it currently read 7:43 A.M. From his position above what he was fairly sure was the continent of Europe, He could see the entire continent of America light up. He saw what he thought were called "mountains" on the part of land by the blue water. And by god, there was a lot of water. Wheatley wondered why all the damn test chambers in Aperture used that smelly brown stuff when there was so flippin' much blue clean water everywhere! Honestly, how does that make sense?

Wheatley's internal water-induced ramble was interrupted by a beeping noise. He spun around, thinking it came from behind him, from Space Core. "What's that? Who's there?" He asked into the blackness of space. The beeping picked up and a voice chimed out.

"Intelligence Dampening Sphere. This is your homing program." An automated male voice said. Wheatley's optic spun wildly, trying to find the voice.

"W-who is that?" He said, his voice shaking. Space core came floating back into view, apparently having a conversation with himself.

"Father, is that you?" He said. Space Core's voice then deepened significantly. "Yes son, it is Father. We are in space together." The automated voice rang out again.

"Intelligence Dampening Sphere, are you ready to begin Homing Transfer Process?" Space Core answered his father.

"Yes! Father we are in space!' His yellow optic shrank to a small yellow dot and the automated voice spoke again. _"Answer processed as 'yes'. Ini-"_ "We're in space. I'm in space. SPACE. IT'S SPAAAAACE!" Wheatley rolled his optic at Space's antics, before realizing that the automated voice was still talking.

"-Ing Transfer Process initiated." Wheatley's own optic shrank in fear. What? He hadn't answered yes! What the BLOODY HELL WAS GOING ON? The voice spoke again.

"Please prepare for Core Transfer. During transfer you may experience _excruciating_ pain. In this case, simply ignore it, as nothing can be done." Wheatley's metal shell quivered.

"Pain...what...what are you on abou-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" A sharp wedge had driven behind his optic, having emerged from the Homing Program in his framework. The wedge drove in further, twisting until two small panels behind Wheatley's optic had been pried open enough for another smaller instrument to snake through. Wheatley was now shaking uncontrollably in his small round frame. He screamed again at the small instrument jammed into his main processor. His optic began to shrink beyond Wheatley's control. He screamed louder as the pain increased and his optic shrank and shrank, until the pain came to a sudden stop and everything went black.

* * *

**I should mention now that this is very, _very_ AU, or it will be. The story's only just begun...**

**This chapter was difficult to write and to be honest, I hate how it turned out. I have a plot set in mind for this to follow but am having trouble executing. I am trying to keep this at an easy pace, and to try and keep everyone in character. If there is a problem with this story, anything at all, please leave a review or a personal message and I will fix it. I also realize I am not very fluent in British, but I'm trying. If you think Wheatley is too far from where you believe he should be, please let me know and I will adjust it. Any critique is helpful as I am new at writing and could use advice.  
**

**Much gratitude, **

**AAB  
**


	3. Ominous

**AN: Oi I cannot believe I messed up the bloody Portal colors in the last chapter! My sincerest apologies for my idiot mistake, it will not happen again.**

**As for the...confusion, I suppose, over why GLaDOS is not using the other 10000 test subjects and so on, I have edited some of the last chapter to try and fix it. However, this chapter should clear it all up a bit, as this is mostly just rambling explanations. **

**VALVe owns everything, I own nothing**

The sun had been visible for about 20 minutes when Chell awoke from a rather fitful sleep in an old barn attic. It had been five days since she had left Aperture and she was still in what appeared to be farm country. She sat up and gave her surroundings a once over. The 5 bales of hay still lay in the far corner of the barn flat. The companion cube rested about 2 feet from her makeshift bed, humming softly.

The portal gun lay in front of the cube in easy reach should Chell have needed it while sleeping. Looking over herself, she saw her Aperture Laboratories tank top still on, her orange jumpsuit still tied around her waist. Her longfall boots had been taken off for the night and were propped against the backside of the companion cube.

She stretched, pulling one arm behind her neck, then doing the same with the other. She rubbed down her calves, which still had two light lingering bands of red marks from the tight straps on the longfall boots. She hopped to her feet and pulled herself upright, feeling her back pop. Giving a satisfied sigh, she walked to the edge of the flat and slid down one of the metal posts holding the roof up to the ground.

She stopped and noticed an odd sound that she hadn't noticed before. A bright flash lit up the room and she jumped back, wishing she had brought the portal gun down with her. The noise came again, a loud boom. She was reminded of the sound of a metal catwalk nearly collapsing under her while running from a psychotic AI. But this sound wasn't under near, it was above her and all around her.

She looked to the door of the barn and saw what looked like a literal wall of water falling from the sky. It had started last night. She had been walking late the previous evening, looking for a shelter when the first drops had started. At first, she was sent into a frenzy, not having any clue what the stuff was.

She ran around frantically looking for a place to hide, until she realized it wasn't going to hurt her. She set everything she was carrying down and simply stood still, her face turned up into the downpour. She was in an almost-trance like state. She had heard of this before, from GLaDOS, she thought. In one of her obnoxious speeches about going to the surface. She had mentioned something about rain pouring down, so all the deer were hiding away.

Chell had never seen anything else fall from the sky in her memory, so she assumed this must be rain. In which case... she hesitantly stuck her tongue out and caught a few droplets, focusing on any strange taste it might have. Her eyes narrowed a fraction as she stood stiff as a board, waiting for her brain to fade out or her limbs to start tingling. Nothing happened and, realizing that the rain was not poison and would in fact do no damage, she sat on her companion cube and leaned back on her hands, tilting her face up into the rain.

She sighed, a small smile on her face as she kicked her feet around in the tall grass. She scootched back further onto the cube and heard a metal clang. The hubcap she had tied around her waist had hit the side. She untied the sleeves of the jumpsuit and took it off, turning it over in her hands.

She had taken some time the previous day to use one of the jugs of water to scrub the hubcap as well as the companion cube free of debris using one of her jumpsuit sleeves. Now, it was a dull, only slightly red tinged silver chrome color. She held it up, noticing that it was in a slight bowl shape with a few holes closer to the outer edge. She experimentally held it with the dip bending down and watched the rain collect in it. She grinned, proud of her discovery.

She tied the portal gun and hubcap to her back, then fastened the companion cube to her back. (She had found some destroyed dilapidated old car and upon further investigation noticed it had a large mesh net in the back, which she fit around one edge of the cube. She ripped a couple strings apart to make holes big enough for her arms and Voila.) After an hour of walking she found the old farmhouse.

Now, she walked outside cautiously into the heavy rain, and once again saw light erupt across the sky. She jumped again, shaking a little in shock before running outside, grabbing the hubcap full of rain water and running back inside, her heart pounding as the boom sounded again. She climbed one-handed back up to the flat and filed the water from the hubcap into the one bleach bottle she had taken with her.

Curled up against the comforting glow of her companion cube, she picked up a can of beans she found in a cubby below the barn and a tapered, metal thing attached to a black rectangular handle that happened to be very, very sharp and sawed the top off the can, settling back to enjoy her meal, freezing once more at the next boom.

When the booming stopped, she would set out again. But for now, she waited.

* * *

Back inside the belly of Aperture, GLaDOS was watching a monitor which displayed the words "Core Transfer Completion" and a loading bar underneath, which at the second was set at at 93%. She opened two panels in the floor and a fitted shell rose up, not too much unlike those used for the edgeless safety cubes. A management rail then slid in as the monitor chimed out a cheerful "Core Transfer Complete. Delivering transferred core now."

An inactive core slid in on the management rail and dropped into the fitted shell. GLaDOS moved a wire through the bottom of the shell and into the core. It connected to the mainframe, and slowly, everything started working again. The shell booted up, as did the transferred core now inhabiting it. Wheatley's software took control over the shell. Slowly sliding the covers on his now teal optic open, he look around for a moment

And screamed.

GLaDOS sighed dramatically and spoke with a bored hint to her voice. "Oh. Good. The idiot awakens." Wheatley quivered and his new optic shrank as he stared at her, trying to find his voice.

"W-What the b-bloody hell _is g-going on?"_ He stuttered. GLaDOS laughed slowly, almost sinister and turned to look at the sphere.

"You really can't tell where you are and what is currently happening? Maybe the core transfer made you even stupider. But you were already very, very idiotic, so maybe nothing's changed and I'm simply not used to how slow you are." She said.

If Wheatley hadn't been terrified out of his system he would have complained about her insulting his intellect. Instead, he found his voice box seemed to be malfunctioning, or maybe that was just him, and he could only stare at the looming AI in front of him, quivering in the fitted shell. GLaDOS moved closer and looked around him, examining him.

"Your system has entirely rebooted, so either something went wrong when you were hacked in Earth's orbit or you finally learned how to shut up. Either way, it's a welcome change. I still have that awful lingering memory of your voice shouting into my head and I'm afraid I'll never get rid of that. I'm quite glad I don't have to hear it in person." Wheatley felt a surge of anger come up through his fear, his voice seemed to come with it.

"I'm not a bloody tumor! Have you hacked into my system or something and started messing with my thoughts? Because honestly that's just rude on so many levels!" GLaDOS narrowed her optic at him and Wheatley shrank back into his shell, falling silent. GLaDOS sighed dramatically.

"I suppose this does require some explanation, doesn't it?" Wheatley nodded and spun a little, looking up at her with his optic covers wide open.

"Let me start from the beginning and put this in a way your simplistic mind can understand without risk of implosion." Wheatley's optic narrowed and he was about to voice protest, but with one glare from GLaDOS he fell silent. She continued.

"First off, how you got here. That part is simple. Core transfer process. All of your system was transported and imported into an empty core. There. that was the easy part. Now for the real story. You remember those two robots you stumbled upon when you clung to my body like a sick corrupted parasite?" she asked calmly. "Well, I've noticed recently that while their testing skills are very impressive, they're almost...too... impressive. In fact, the only real problem I've had with them is that they have picked up some human-like mannerisms. And that got me thinking about how much I missed human testing. The cries of pain, the smell of human fear. (Wheatley shuddered, remembering the first time he saw that on a certain human's face,) But you know what I missed the most? The unpredictable failure." Wheatley's optic spun around madly.

"What's that got to do with me though? I mean not that I don't appreciate being back on earth but I'm not in my body and honestly but with absolutely _no_ offense to you I don't exactly understand...why... I'm here because you are a little terrifying and if you just brought me here to tell me stories I really don't get why... I got here." He laughed nervously and whirred in his shell. GLaDOS huffed at him

"Yes well if you'd stayed silent for more than 2 minutes I would have gotten around to explaining that to you." She shot him another glare. Man, if looks could kill. "Back to the subject of human testing. The Cooperative Testing Artificial Intelligence Units are exactly that, artificial. I made them to replace human testing, and to experiment with a new kind of testing. I've done almost every kind with humans except put them into teams. But, humans are far to unpredictable to be trusted to work in partnerships without killing the other. So I started thinking, maybe there was a way to control the humans."

I used to encourage humans do complete testing by saying they would get cake at the end of test completion. But of course you already know that, I's fairly sure your tumorous infection on my mind put that idea there. But maybe not, seeing as how it actually worked. Unlike your usual moronic plans." Wheatley's optic lids narrowed and he glared at her in anger.

"I am NOT moronic! In fact I think that was my idea, which in case because her mighty royal highness liked it proves that it wasn't moronic! Right there! Proof! Not a moron! " His ramble was stopped short as one of GLaDOS's claws swung down from the ceiling and plucked Wheatley up, squeezing him threateningly.

"Since you seem incapable of interrupting me every chance you get, I'll just temporarily shut down your vocal processors." She told him, swinging him back and forth.

"Oh nononononono please don't! Please I won't interrupt anymore please I promise!" Wheatley sputtered. GLaDOS's optic spun around and another instrument dropped down and plugged into Wheatley's backside. He pleaded nonstop, optic small and moving around anxiously until he went dead silent, quivering as her tried to make his voice box function.

"There" GLaDOS said, "Much better." She unceremoniously dumped Wheatley back into the edgeless safety cube deposit and glared at him a moment.

"As I was saying, I used to use cake to control the humans while in individual testing, but I didn't have a way to make them work in partners without killing each other. Until now, that is. I discovered a method for making humans test in pairs like the Cooperative Testing AIs. Which is where you come in." She paused, looking at Wheatley again, who's optic was spinning in confusion.

She turned to the wall, where a large monitor moved out from behind a panel. The screen flickered momentarily before turning to display a relaxation vault, exactly like the ten thousand others inside of Aperture, except instead being occupied by a skeleton or a partially degraded dead human, this one contained a human, who, from what Wheatley could see was seemingly still in one piece. Which meant either it was dead or a half-dead vegetable.

Aside from the smelly human, the only other difference in the room was that instead of lying in an overly-squishy bed it was on what appeared to be a metal table of sorts. GlaDOS turned back from the monitor to stare into Wheatley's optic, it's teal lens now fully dilated and staring at the screen, as if he was expecting it to jump to life as some creepy corpsey thing.

"Do you know how I was created? I was a computer program that the Aperture Science Engineers dumped the personality and mind of a human into. A young woman named Caroline." Wheatley's optic spun. SHE had been... human? That was bloody incredible! He didn't know that was possible. Well, it was Aperture, he supposed, so they could really do anything. GlaDOS continued:

"Of course, I was much stronger and deleted her. There's not a single bit of Caroline left inside of me." She spun again to look at the monitor. The dead/undead/veggie body thing hadn't moved. Good, well, that pretty much canceled out any thought Wheatley had of it trying to kill him.

"I was created the same way any other AI was created, through a computer program, a human mind, and some very advanced engineering." She turned back to Wheatley, expecting him to have figured it out. Instead he was just sitting there, watching her anticlimactically.

"Do you have any idea what I'm trying to imply here? No? Well, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. It is quite a lot fro your numbskull brain to compute." She turned back to the monitor, then back to Wheatley. "Let me tell you a story," she said, "Once upon a time, a young man, very very long ago, worked in a restaurant as a waiter. It had horrible pay and he hated it.

Until one day, he found a flier for Aperture science as a test subject. Excited about the high pay it offered, he signed up. A week later, this man was brought down here, had his brain scanned, and was then selected for the Core Creation Wing. The Scientists put him through many tests, like the ones you forced that poor, mute maniac through," Wheatley shuddered and looked down sadly as GlaDOS continued.

"After a few tests, they decided that this man was indeed, an absolute idiot. He was perfect for a new core they had created to help control me, to slow me down." Wheatley quickly spun up and stared at GlaDOS, optic wide and gaping. GlaDOS laughed lowly, continuing.

"They had built the program, and this man was the final piece. They put him in surgery, and attached him to the core. This newly created Intelligence Dampening Sphere, or IDS was then attached to me. But of course he stopped going by that name, instead making up a ridiculous name for himself. Wheatley." She turned and looked at Wheatley. He was shaking madly, looking from her to the monitor and back again.

"Yes," she said, "That little filthy human body there is you. Or, it was you. And after thinking, I decided that floating along in space for the rest of the universe, no pain or suffering was much, much too good for you after what you did. So I thought, 'If you can put a human into a core, you can get them out again." GLaDOS laughed airily. Wheatley's optic shrank as she moved in close to him and grabbed him up in the claw again. She held him up close to the monitor.

"This puny, pathetic, mortal, weak human was you. And now, it's going to become you once again." She spun Wheatley around too look at him optic to optic. "Don't give me that look, deep down, you _know_ you deserve this." She moved him to a panel in the wall, which opened and revealed a drill similar to the one that had gotten him to this new core only much, much bigger. His panels were pried open and the drill sank in.

If he could, he would have screamed bloody murder. This hurt way, way more than the first time! He felt himself start to shut down. His barely used weird teal optic faded out to a gray black circle and the optic covers closed. GLaDOS flung the useless, empty core into the incinerator and set the machines in the relaxation room to work.

* * *

**So...er... I hope this sort of cleared things up...for the moment. Of course it's going to be explained further on but for now, I hope this will do... **


	4. Back Track

**AN: Ok, I'm embarrassed about how long this took. I am so, so, SO sorry for the awful delay on this! Time just... got away from me. Well, that's an awful excuse. I have no excuses. The delay on this shouldn't be allowed and I will try desperately not to let it happen again. Anyways, here's chapter 4. It's kinda splotchy in my opinion, so if you have any issues with it, let me know and I will resolve and repost the chapter.**

**VALVe owns everything here, not me. I'm just a loser with the ability to think.**

* * *

Another loud BOOM shoved it's way out of the clouds, the follow-up to yet another CRACK and flash of light. Chell sighed and looked out from the garage she was currently staying in. The rain had been like this for hours. Then it would clear up for a bit, switch to the nice rain Chell liked, then go back to the cracks and booms usually for the entire night and into the morning. Occasionally it would stop for a while and the sun would show for a few hours before more clouds rolled in.

Now, it was about 5 in the evening on Chell's 9th day out of Aperture. She, through she didn't realize it, had gone about 63 miles from the Aperture wheat field entrance. She was still on the look for humans and had found none, although the broken and deserted buildings had been getting more clustered. She figured she had to be getting close to the humans. She couldn't be the only one. They were there. She knew it. Gut instinct, as they say. Or something.

She had stumbled upon this little garage at about 11 in the morning. It was easily accessible, none of the walls or roof had collapsed, and it was in one piece. She had entered the little room warily. You never knew what could be hiding in these places. Once satisfied it was abandoned, she set her cube, hubcap, and bleach bottle of water down and had set out to look for food.

She had barely made it back before the booming had begun again, the rain falling harder. She sat on the floor against the wall, watching the rain out of the half open garage door. Another flash came and she squeezed her eyes shut. The BOOM came and she winced, curling in on herself in the smallest way. She really, really hated that noise. After a while of sitting she stood and stretched.

The downpour had made her hideaway colder, thus making Chell colder. She untied her jumpsuit sleeves and pulled them on before zipping the suit up. Rubbing up and down her arms, she further examined the small concrete room. There were shelves covering two of the walls, though most were empty. Useless.

In fact, the only thing that proved useful to her was a large box sitting on a large plywood board that sat about 2 feet off the ground. She set the box on the ground and pulled the sharp thing out of the side of her longfall boot, which she had deposited by the door. She rubbed her inner right calf and examined it. The bleeding had stopped. Chell had quickly learned her lesson that the sharp thing did in fact cut human flesh.

She sat down by the box and used the knife to stab a series of holds in a circle on the side, making a perforation she then punched out. Reaching inside the box, her hand found a smaller, odd feeling box. It was too large to fit through the hole, so she braced her foot against the side and pulled until the box ripped the cardboard and pulled through. Curious, she placed the odd box in her lap. From the side it looked like a small house. It had a handle on the top, which, after messing with the damn thing for a few, she realized was able to be pushed back, opening the lid. She looked inside the small box, which felt as though it was the same material as her portal gun. There didn't seem to be anything evil in it, so she started pulling its contents out.

The small box was an absolute treasure chest. It had 6 metal cans with a pull tab thing on the top. When she pulled the tab up, the tab pushed in a small section on the top of the can. It housed a brown liquid, which Chell tentatively took a sip of. Her eyes widened as the carbonated beverage entered her mouth, the bubbles making her tongue tingle oddly. But it was good. Sweet, actually. She quickly finished off one can.

The rest of the odd little box held a few pre-wrapped cake-looking things Chell had never seen before. She didn't know what it was, but the package said Cake on it so it must be good. She set them aside for a treat later. She jammed her hand back into the box, feeling around inside. Her hand found something cylindrical and she pulled it out. It was a large flashlight. She looked outside and saw that the sky was nearly black. She noticed that her room had gotten very dark as well. She turned the flashlight on, discovered it had a stand attached, and propped it up next to her so she could continue her search through the box.

Other than a first aid kit, a few boxes of nonperishable food and some batteries, the only other object in the box was something squishy and large taking up the entire bottom.. She ran her hand over it. It was soft too. Very soft. She yanked it out and noticed it was folded. So she stood and shook it out. She smiled in sheer bliss when the large, thick fleece blanket unfolded, a plump pillow falling out of it. She sat back down on the ground and pulled the blanket up. She buried her face in it, inhaling deeply. It smelled faintly of cologne, a smell she thought she'd encountered before. But she couldn't remember where.

She rubbed her cheek against it happily, she couldn't remember the last time she felt something this soft. It was wonderful. It was so different from the heavy, stuffy, scratchy blanket of the aperture Relaxation Center. Chell leaned back against the wall and pulled the blanket with her. Her eyes felt heavy. Sighing, she stood again and began searching for something to sleep on that wasn't the freezing, hard concrete ground. She looked on all the shelves, finding nothing. She peered over the top of one and her knee collided painfully with the sheet of plywood. That will work. She grabbed the edge and yanked it. It's opposite side hit the ground, and Chell lay the other side down so it was flat on the floor.

She looked up, wondering if she should have kept it elevated. The rain was starting to seep in from outside. The stand it had been sitting on was a large, long piece of furniture covered in plastic. She yanked it off and revealed the piece. It was red and appeared to be divided into three sections. It was flat, but had a back that rose up with three red cushions lining it. Chell grinned again, but then her face fell into wary look. She stood and kicked it repeatedly. No little critters came out, and it seemed to be in pretty good shape. She pressed down with her hand, fingers spread, moving her hand over all of it. It didn't collapse in any places under her hand. Perfect.

She put the little plastic box with the cakes and cans by the foot of the couch. Then she grabbed the pillow and propped it against the arm rest on the side. She snatched the blanket up and carefully sat down on the couch. It didn't appear to be collapsing under her. That was a bonus. Chell slipped her longfall boots off and lay down on the couch. Her eyes fluttered closed. Oh my god it was comfortable! And soft! But not soft to the point where she would leave a massive indentation in it. This was heavenly. Chell placed her head on the pillow and stretched out on the couch, sighing in happy relief. Her stomach gave a loud gurgle.

Sitting up slightly, she reached down into the plastic box and grabbed one of the wrapped cakes. She peeled the wrapping off and scooped a little of the chocolate icing off with her finger and put it in her mouth. Oh my _god._ That was heavenly. Absolutely heavenly. She took a bite of the cake, which was even more blissful than the icing. She quickly finished two of them off and lay back down, sighing in content. She pulled the blanket up to her chin and burrowed into the couch cushions. For the first time in years, (decades maybe, she really had no clue how long she was in Aperture,) she fell asleep with a strange feeling in her chest, one she hadn't felt since she felt that elevator lift going up when Wheatley took over.

Happiness.

* * *

Only about 2 miles away, a blue and an orange circle looked out at the rain curiously. ATLAS and P-Body were sitting underneath an awning outside and old restaurant, waiting for the rain to stop so they could continue their mission. They both had wanted to just run in the rain when it started about 3 days ago, but a sharp chime in from GlaDOS telling them she would explode them if they did changed their minds.

Now, the two sibling robots started their 67th game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. P-Body won and she did a little dance, her upper body spinning as she laughed at ATLAS. ATLAS glared at her and grumbled before jumping up and pulling her main core out of her body. Her body walked around after him, trying to grab her head back. She finally did, and responded by tripping ATLAS into a puddle.

_I suggest you both stop it immediately and return to the mission I set for you. The storm has lightened up significantly, which means I don't have to kill you if you go out there. You're so close. Get her and bring her back. Orange, Blue, Go. Use what I equipped you with and bring. Her. Back._

GLaDOS's voice disappeared from their heads as quickly as it had come. P-Body and ATLAS both chattered excitedly, exchanged some odd banter, then high-fived and ran out into the rain. They moved closer and closer to the coordinates in their navigation software. It only took them about 15 minutes to go the 2 miles seeing as how they couldn't wear out or feel exhaustion. Their destination was a little garage with a half open door. ATLAS peered under it curiously before ducking under. P-Body followed him into the room, through she hit her head on the bottom of the door. They turned on their flashlights and looked around the room. P-Body investigated some shelves and walked along the wall. ATLAS was looking around on the floor. He looked up and noticed some squishy paper covered stuff lining the walls. He walked over to it and poked it. Repeatedly. He stabbed a hole through the paper and began pulling the yellow plastic-y stuff out. He was throwing it in the air when P-Body elbowed him harshly in the side, chattering quietly. He narrowed his optic in annoyance. She repeated her chatter and pointed frantically at the opposite side of the room.

ATLAS turned and made an awed sound. There she was! The human! In rest mode, right in front of their optics. They made their way over to her. P-Body grabbed at the blanket, lifting it a little before letting it fall. ATLAS came over and pulled the blanket off and held it up. The two laughed and ATLAS threw it onto P-Body's head. She stumbled around blindly and ATLAS tried to direct her, only to have her step in a box and go crashing to the ground. The two laughed, ATLAS doubled over, until they heard a noise behind them. They turned around and saw that the human had awoken. She was pressed against the wall, Portal gun in her hands and her eyes wide with fear.

P-Body jumped up and waved excitedly, chattering out a greeting Chell didn't understand. ATLAS waved too. They would be smiling like idiots if they could. Chell lowered the Portal gun and looked at them in confusion. She had seen these bots before, right before she left Aperture. But why were they here? She watched as they played tug-of-war with the blanket, which ended in ATLAS falling backwards and P-Body laughing.

The two bots had momentarily forgotten about the human they were supposed the bring back. A sharp shock went through each of them and they both screamed. _She is right in front of you two idiots. Get her now or I will force you to._

ATLAS looked and P-Body and nodded. They moved to Chell, who was watching them less cautiously now. To her, they appeared harmless. ATLAS played with her hair and she shrugged him off, turning tense and cautious again. P-Body nodded at ATLAS and he nodded back, waving in front of Chell to get her attention. P-Body moved behind her and poke the base of her skull, sending a sharp shock through her system and knocking her unconscious. They both stood and looked at the human slumped on the floor before ATLAS gave a victory shout and hugged P-Body hard. She looked around awkwardly and patted him on the head, pushing him off.

Not even twenty minutes later, the two robots were dragging the girl off, P-Body with her left arm, ATLAS with her right and the Portal gun. The coordinates changed back to the Aperture entrance and they set off on their way, the rain still lightly falling on their heads.

* * *

Back in the bowels of Aperture, there was no rain, no fresh air, no soda, no couches, and no cake. There was only a mind-blowing pain as a human body regained consciousness.

The first thing he was aware of was a sharp pain coursing through his head. It was much, much worse than the pain he usually felt. Maybe GLaDOS had tampered with his pain receptors to make them more sensitive. But how would she even do that? Last he could recall, he was floating in space.

Wait... No. He kept his optic closed and remained motionless. He scanned his memory banks, only to find that finding a specific memory was difficult and that it came up fuzzy.

That's right. GLaDOS had transferred him back here into some crap substitute core. A pang of sorrow ran through him as he realized his body was still trapped in space. But after she brought him here...she told him about human testing, and those robots, and...

She had shown him a monitor that looked inside a room with a brain dead human. And told him a story about this human, and how that human was in line to become... Oh dear. But that was impossible. No even She could have that technology.

He slowly became aware to the fact that his body didn't stop at just his head. He felt the presence of something else attached to him. below his head. _Ok Wheatley, you're probably just imagining things, vacuum of space just jogged up your processors a bit. There is no problem, no problem, what. so. ever. Just, open up your optic, alright? Go on just... just look around. _He slowly opened his optics, and quickly shut them again.

_Ok, so, two problems here. The first being that bloody light. It's gonna kill me. Second, there appears to be a slight malfunction with my optic... There appears to, um, be... two of them. And you're breathing, you just inhaled. So that's not normal. How much did this woman tamper with you?  
_

He lay there with his optics shut for another few minutes, practicing breathing. Turns out, if you forgot to breath, you would die. So he kept breathing unevenly, trying to reach a steady pace. He settled for inhaling sharply and exhaling slowly. Carefully, he opened his optics again, blinking rapidly. Weren't his optics designed to adjust to any lighting in a millisecond? This took almost twenty! Well, he though it did. He couldn't tell exactly, GLaDOS had shut off all access he had to any of his internal programming. He had no sense of where he was or what time it was.

When his optics adjusted, he looked around. He didn't feel attached to anything that seemed like a management rail. In fact the only thing he felt was an odd, soft thing under him, under his head and lying on him. But how could it be lying on him? It would cover his optics and his entire body if it was on him. He was able to realize he was in a relaxation vault, not unlike Chell's had been, only his had pine trees on the walls. Why was he here? This wasn't space.

That must mean that he wasn't making it all up in his head. He realized he was shaking as he looked in front of him at the wall. He inhaled sharply. Looking back at him was a man lying in a bed. A smelly, gross human. He had the same unruly mop of red hair that the undead monitor body had when GLaDOS showed him. He had a device that wrapped around his ears and held two glass plates in front of his eyes.

He looked absolutely bloody awful. You could tell this poor fellow had been in cryogenic storage much too long. His eyes were sunken with dark circles under them. His cheeks were sunken in as well, making him look unbearably unhealthy and tired. Wheatley cringed away from the human. Was this his sentence? To nurse this pathetic lump back to health or something? He looked at the human again and saw it raising it's arm to it's face. Wheatley felt a strange sensation, like he was moving. He looked down and saw a human arm reaching up. His breathing quickened and the hand shook. Wheatley concentrated hard, and the fingers on the hand curled inwards. He looked back at the wall where the human resides and the fingers opened again. So did the hand next to him.

He shook madly and looked down at the bed he figured he was lying on. A lumpy, longish figure was covered in a sheet that led upwards. The sheet ended and he made out a blue shirt. He followed the shirt up until it ended right underneath his body. He looked back up to the wall. The man was wearing a blue Aperture jumpsuit and his legs were covered in a sheet. Wheatley screamed. That...that hideous thing...

That was him.


	5. Replay

**AN: Um... Hi. God, I hate how much I keep delaying this. i can not apologize enough for the wait on this. This story is difficult and I'm an idiot who keeps getting confused by her own plot. Anyway just... please tell me if you want faster updates, plot explanations. I write for the readers, so I want the readers happy. Every review is cherished. Unbeta-ed, as per usual, so if you are bothered by errors please tell me and I will go over it again**

**VALVe owns everything, I'm just a fangirl with the ability to think and write.**

**On with the show...  
**

* * *

GLaDOS heard a beeping to her left and turned to the large monitor suspended on the wall. The alarm was an alert for when vital signs were brought of out sleep mode. So, the little idiot was conscious. That's a plus. GlaDOS chuckled lightly to herself watching him act terrified at his own reflection in the mirror she had specially installed to increase his initial reaction. Of course she was hoping for a slightly larger fear rea... A scream echoed through her chamber. Ah. There was that reaction she wanted.

The core turned human was shaking and moving his arms around. She zoomed in on his face and laughed lowly. He looked absolutely awful. He was obviously very undernourished. After all, the body had been in storage for much longer than the test subjects. He had been a core to be stuck on GLaDOS. For testing to be accomplished, GLaDOS needed to be functional. And according to the engineers, She was not functional until cores were stuck on her. All of the core doner's old bodies had been put in a separate easy-access wing from the Portal Gun test subjects in case they ever wanted to experiment on their corpses or try to put the human back into its body. Something that had never successfully been done until 19.5683 hours ago.

He showed obvious signs of a failing health. Sunken eyes, protruding cheekbones, nearly transparent he was so pale. Horribly thin, the white's of his eyes were tinted with red, though probably not from being used in so long rather than illness. But yes, he was thin. Sickly looking and thin. Well, that just would not do for what she had planned for him. She needed him to be able to run, jump, lift heavy objects. This would not do at all. She accessed the medicinal ward. Seconds later, a thick, opaque fluid began flowing through a small tube, through Aperture, through the ceiling and into a holding tank suspended in the ceiling of the Relaxation Vault.

* * *

Wheatley heard a whirring behind him and inhaled sharply. (God, that was a bizarre sensation.) He turned his head. (Bizarre again.) Behind him was a cylinder hanging form the ceiling that was filling with a milky-clear looking liquid. He felt the body's (his?) fingers clench in fear. (Ok he really did not like this.) A small wire came down from the ceiling, the end being held by a claw.

"Good morning, little moron." A frighteningly familiar female voice rang out through the room. Wheatley tried to speak but couldn't get the body's voice box to function at first. Only after several tries did he get it, but he didn't realize that in order for a human to speak, that human had to open their mouth. So he did, and found that speech was indeed easier, and that this body seemed to be able to move its mouth to form the words like a normal human. It was odd having a mouth, he wasn't sure he liked it. He tried speaking again, and though he had much more success this time, it still came out as a mumbled, broken sentence.

"Speak up." GlaDOS ordered. Wheatley took a deep, strange feeling breathe and spoke again, finding his voice could get louder if he only thought to make it louder.

"m'not bluddy moorin." He mumbled. He heard GlaDOS sigh heavily.

"Well, it seems you have yet to master the simple, easy concept of speech. Which while it is a relief from your obnoxious voice, I have to say I am disappointed. Most humans master the concept of speech at the age of three or four years old." He didn't event try to make a comeback, instead just sitting there wincing in pain every time he moved. GlaDOS sighed.

"Unfortunately, the extremely painful, exhausting and mentally crippling plans I have in store for you cannot take place just yet. With your current state, nearly dead from undernourishment that is," Wheatley's eyes widened. He was _what?_ "And whatever brain damage you may have, I cannot put them into action." The claw holding the teeny wire moved towards him and Wheatley quickly jerked away. He regretted the move instantly, however, as pain shot up through his side.

"Hold your arm out." GlaDOS said. When Wheatley refused, Little idiot, another claw came down and stretched his arm out for him, holding it firmly in place. Wheatley cried out in pain.

For God's sake that _hurts! _Why is she making it hurt? He squeezed his eyes shut and whined pathetically as the claw inserted the needle end of the wire into his arm. A stream of the clearish liquid flowed down through the wire and into his arm. He felt a shiver run through the alien body at the sensation. The claws retracted and Wheatley clumsily tried to maneuver his arm to take the wire out. A sharp shock ran through him and he yelped. He felt the source of it on the back of his neck. Apparently She had stuck more into him than just that IV thing.

"Do. Not. Touch. That." GlaDOS said, her voice turning sickly sweet, "Consider that Aperture Science Medical Intravenous Drip your... lifeline. Literally, it's keeping you alive. That liquid being pumped through your circulatory system is a blend of nutrients, electrolytes, blah blah blah stuff necessary to the life of a human, like you." Wheatley couldn't help but wince. He hated how she pointed out that he was... well, stuck in, a human. A smelly human. GlaDOS continued.

"It should help bring you back to an internal stability good enough for the Plans in your future. Lucky for you, that won't be for a few days. We're still awaiting the final piece in the puzzle of your misery. The wire extends from that bucket, and it had a full extended length of 22.4 feet. So you can move around the full floor space of this room without removing it. And believe me, if you remove it, it will not benefit you. You need it."

Wheatley looked at the smaller version of the GLaDOS cam on the wall and was finally able to find his voice.

"W-why do I n-need to be moving? I-I assure you I am perfectly find j-just lying here. All day. No c-complaints, What. So. Ever." He chuckled nervously.

"Oh, this is going to be fun. You have legs now, idiot. Humans walk on legs." Wheatley huffed.

"I-I can use legs j-just fine! Watch!" The words were out of his mouth before he could think about them and he immediately regretted it. But refusing to let Her have the satisfaction of calling him an idiot, he focused on trying to move the body's limbs to make it stand up. He found that by bracing the left hand firmly behind it's back, and pushing up, he could move the body into a sitting position. And that by then resting the arms on the legs, the body could lean forward and remain sitting up.

He then took another weird feeling deep breath and tried to push himself standing.

And fell back onto the bed within seconds. He heard GlaDOS chuckle lowly and a new anger boiled inside of him. With a new flicker of determination, he repeated his movements and managed to get himself standing upright, wobbling only slightly.

_Ok, now, let's try making this body walk, Wheatley. Alright mate? Now, how do humans walk again... one foot is put out, placed on the ground, then you just repeat. Like shampooing. You're supposed to repeat shampooing when you take a bath right? Do I need a bath? How do you tell if you do? I'm not covered in dirt so I think I'm fine. What was I talking about...walking. Right. Let's get this done Wheatley. _

Wheatley nodded smally at the end of his inner pep talk. He moved one foot, well he dragged it across the carpet, and placed it firmly down in front of him. Progress. Good. Alright, now the other. He moved the other foot like the first and placed it in front of him, balancing on the left. He tried taking another step and promptly fell over. His head collided painfully with the edge of the dresser and he nearly screamed at the pain that exploded inside his head.

The arms instinctively moved to clutch at his head and Wheatley squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out another wave of agony as it coursed through the body he was inside. He shakily maneuvered the arms and propped himself up against the wall, whimpering with every movement. Was the aching in the limbs increasing or was the pain in his head making him slightly mad already? He moved the left hand up to the back of his head, pressing against it in some sad attempt to relieve the pain. He'd seen humans do it before. Although this just seemed to be making the pain worse.

The pain in his head was the main sources of sensory overload, but Wheatley became aware of a different feeling, this time on the hand. Heat was definitely there, but what was that other part of it? It felt like something was slipping down over the fingers. He retracted the hand and held it up in front of his eyes. It was coated in a red liquid that looked something like Propulsion Gel... but he'd seen this red liquid before, on a test subject going through a track while he was stuck to GLaDOS's body.

He was a ratty looking man, who for some odd reason always babbled to himself and talked to a box. He had been going through a course, and a turret had shot him in the leg. His thigh had been torn, and this red stuff had been everywhere.

"Oh look. You've been conscious for less than twenty minutes and you've already managed to draw blood. The body you're in isn't healthy enough for blood loss, you know." GLaDOS said. Wait, this stuff was _blood? _Didn't humans needs that to you know, survive?

"Oh god I'm gonna die. I don't wanna die oh god nononononoooo." Wheatley rambled, staring at the blood coating the hand in a panic. His voice rose and he started shouting like a madman. Well, at least he had figured out how to work a human voicebox. Rather unfortunate fact.

"OH GOD DON'T LET ME DIE I DON'T WANT TO DIE I'VE HEARD OF ANDROID HELL AND HUMAN HELL AND I'LL END UP IN BOTH AND I CAN'T DO THAT I'LL BE STUCK WITH ALL THE BLOODY ROBOTS AND MR. JOHNSON AND I CAN'T DIE I JUST CAN'T OH GOD HELP ME!"

GLaDOS watched as he began hyperventilating, shaking uncontrollably before finally passing out from lack of oxygen. GLaDOS set the claws in the room to move the idiot back to the bed and patch up the tiny, half-inch cut on the back of his head. She remained silent when finished and turned off the camera watching the Relaxation Vault. She hung in her chamber, unmoving and silent. She was trapped in her thoughts.

How did that little idiot know about Mr. Johnson? Surely he couldn't have ever known the man. Her records showed that Wheatley had been a waiter in a family-owned restaurant. He had signed up to be in the Aperture Test Subject Program after Cave Johnson had died. Maybe he meant a different Mr. Johnson... GLaDOS ran a scan of his history. His brain had not been backed up. Which meant that the only memories of his old life were still in the body that Wheatley had been thrown back into. She groaned in annoyance. She would have to wait until the memories began to leak back into his conscious then force them out of him. She didn't know why this had suddenly spiked such a wave of curiosity like she hadn't felt since the Curiosity Core had been attached to her.

Deep inside her brain, she felt something stirring. Something she hadn't been involved with in a long, long time.

* * *

"_YOU'RE THE MORON THEY BUILT TO MAKE ME AN IDIOT!" _

_Anger. Filling the shell he resided in to the breaking point. Taking over, seeping in. Taking control. He wanted to destroy. For Science. Then the elevator gave out._

"_IF I'M SUCH A MORON, WHY CAN'T YOU SOLVE A SIMPLE TEST?" _

_Desperation. Rage. A craving ripping him apart from the inside. Every completed test came with a weaker result. It was maddening. It was tipping him over the edge. Why couldn't she do this right?_

"_I ALREADY FIXED IT. AND YOU ARE NOT COMING BACK!"_

_Fear. Regret. Despair. Her grip gave out and he flew up. Space. Empty. Lonely. He couldn't believe it. He had almost killed her. He WANTED to kill her. The only friend he ever had. He had been a monster. He was a monster. _

_What had he done._

* * *

He bolted upright, panting heavily. The Relaxation Vault was dark. He sighed in relief. He was still locked in this little room, which meant he was only dreaming and not reliving his memories. Even in dream form, the surge of emotions that came with them were overpowering. At least he could distract himself from them when he was a core. He wasn't sure now.

As he became more consciously aware of his surroundings, he realized the back of his head was aching. He ran a hand over it, feeling the raised line where a healing gel had been applied. Hadn't he cut himself by falling? Then...he lost blood. How was he not dead? Had She put new blood in him? He also became aware of a dull throbbing in his right arm. He looked down and saw a second tiny tube above the first one. He followed the tube with his eyes and saw it was connected to another container of liquid, this one an opaque orange. This was next to the container of the clearish liquid, only it was about half the size.

After noticing that, he noticed that it somehow became blurry while he slept. That was odd. He tried rubbing his eyes and blinking a lot but everything was still blurry. Was She messing with him?

"How did you go about making everything all fuzzy like that? What are you playing at here? Whatever it is I don't like it." He spoke to the room. Well, more to himself than the room.

"Idiot." GLaDOS's voice chimed out. The lights in the room instantly turned on, causing Wheatley to cringe and cover his eyes with his hands. They still took a horrendously long time to adjust to the light.

"I'm not an idiot! The room's gone loopy on me!" Wheatley said into the empty room. He sat up, moving a little too quickly and clutched his head as an odd sensation went over him. It sort of felt like he was leaving his body, the room suddenly slowed down and he nearly fell over. It only lingered for a few moments, though.

"The room has not moved. Your vision happens to be nothing short of awful. You're just obviously too stupid to figure that out. You did have a human anatomy for dummies software installed into your core when the foreman stupidly put you in charge of all the human test subjects. You'd think out of all the information in there, you'd at least remember that humans often have horrid eyesight. Like you. Although yours is much worse than average. Must be just another defect to add to the countless number you have. I'm going to start a list."

Wheatley clenched the fingers on his hands into a fist, then yelped as his nails cut into the flesh on his palm. He held them up, seeing tiny blood droplets forming. GlaDOS chuckled to herself.

"You know, you really should stop doing that. You only have so much blood, best not to waste it." Wheatley grumbled to himself and, after staring at them for a while trying to decide where to put them, settled with resting his hands in his lap. He tried not to scream and keep his voice level.

"Just tell me how to fix my eyes for gods sake." A panel opened on the ceiling and he looked up. It was the panel that a management rail he had just noticed led up into. His heart clenched and a heavy weight settled into his chest at the sight of it. He'd never be able to use those rails again, probably. Once again he felt a terrifyingly powerful surge of sorrow.

Emotions were odd in this body. Felt...different.

"Look up, moron." GlaDOS demanded. Her voice held a slightly irritated tone to it, Wheatley thought. He looked up and could make out the shape of a small claw that had descended from the hole behind the panel. They opened, and some odd shaped object dropped and bounced off his head. He shrieked and jumped away from it, tumbling off the bed. GlaDOS sighed.

"It's not going to kill you. Now get up. Surely you've at least figured out how to do that by now. Of course last time I did have to move you myself. You're sort of a big, useless jellyfish that can't figure out how to swim. Just taking up space."

Wheatley fought off another rage-induced scream and pulled himself back onto the bed. After groping around aimlessly for a moment, he found the object the claw had dropped.

"Er...what's this?" He asked, dangling the object between his fingers.

"You were wearing them yesterday. Figure it out." She said. He had? He held them close to his eyes and squinted. They were some odd three-sided box looking things with two rectangles on one side. He held them up and looked at the rectangles. Wait. He held them closer and looked through the rectangles. Yes! These were the things he had over his eyes yesterday that made him able to see! But... how did they go on. They had some hook part that he had felt over his ears. He reached up and tugged on his earlobe. Useless, really. Just these fleshy things on the side of your head, pointless!

He tried putting the contraption on, only to end up with it falling off. Eventually though, he managed to get the hooked ends to sit on top of his ears and he pushed the contraption upon his nose as far as it would go. He blinked a few times, startled momentarily by how clear it was. He made an amused noise and looked around the room. He blinked once more. Something was one the right glass rectangle, it looked like a line right down the middle.

"Only you would be excited by a pair of glasses." GlaDOS said. "I had them specially modified so you could be more comfortable wearing them. I cracked one of the lenses to imitate the cracked optic on your old body which you will never see again. I like to think of it as a gentle reminder of how I can easily crush you like a tiny bug if you even dare to disobey me. Just like when you woke me up. And it will also remind you of your time when you were in control and nearly destroyed my beautiful facility, but was then beaten by a weak, slightly chubby human girl. A girl you're even weaker then. And I never would have gotten to discover how much I hated you, or how much I love this body. Being put back in it after getting rid of you was the happiest moment of my life. Thanks for that, by the way. Being pathetic enough for me to just send you into space. If you hadn't, I wouldn't be here right now. And I certainly would never have gotten to try out an experimental core to human transfer. I suppose you aren't completely worthless after all. Mostly worthless, but not completely." She finished. Wheatley could practically drown in the smugness radiating off from her voice.

The rage inside him was threatening to explode out. He hated her so much. How dare she mock him at every turn? He stood from his bed and walked clumsily over to the dresser, not even realizing he had just walked more than 2 feet and not collapsed. He was more distracted by that window thing, which he had realized was a mirror, sitting on the wall behind the dresser.

He stood in front of it. A man, about 20-25 years of age looked out at him. He had medium length hair that was red in color with light blonde undertones. It was sticking out every way possible and when Wheatley tried to flatten it, the mirror man's hair stuck right back into its messy unruly state again. He had a blemish-free complexion save for a few scattered freckles on his forehead and cheeks. His skin looked healthier than it had when Wheatley had first seem him. It had more color. The mirror man's eyes were a light blue color with a dark ring lining the outside of the iris. Wheatley noticed that the eyes seemed to look less dull than before, more alive. The bags under the eyes had lessened, and although he didn't look nearly as sickly, Wheatley still thought he looked fairly horrid.

He was wearing a blue Aperture Science jumpsuit with short sleeves. Odd. Usually they were orange. Maybe GLaDOS had made it this color so she could tell him apart from others if she threw him into an incinerator. Wheatley shuddered and the man in the mirror imitated his motions. He gripped the edge oh the dresser and saw the dilapidated muscles in his arms move in the reflection. The man definitely did not have a lot of muscle to speak of. He was rather thin and lanky. The two IV needles had made red splotches from where they were stabbed into the flesh.

He felt the rage thrashing inside him again at the sight of himself. He was a bloody HUMAN for gods sake! A disgusting, pathetic human. He gripped the dresser harder, terrified at the powerful emotions that were circulating through him.

Is this what anger is supposed to feel like? A blinding red-hot rage bubbling up inside of you? This feeling was stronger than the feeling of pain, was that because emotional versus physical? Or something else? Fear didn't feel this strong. He never even felt any of the current feelings and emotions charging through this body as he did with his real, core body. This was stronger, larger. It slightly terrified him. Did all humans feel like this? How could anyone stay even remotely sane if this was happening inside them? He swallowed down as much of the blind rage as he could, wishing he could go back to the artificial emotions. The ones that didn't rot you inside out. This new body, with its new emotions, was absolutely terrifying. He heard GLaDOS speak.

"Oh good, they're back. Now we can put my Plans into action."

* * *

Less than 50 feet away, Chell stirred herself awake. Her head hurt, and the back of her neck felt hot, like it had been burned. She stretched and cracked her neck. She rubbed at her eyes and looked around. She instantly knew where she was. No. No, this could not be happening... GLaDOS had let her go... she was dreaming. She had to be dreaming. Chell punched herself in the arm, then winced and rubbed the impact spot to relieve the pain. Ok, so maybe she was a very, very deep sleeper.

In the back of her mind, she knew her gut feeling was right. This really was happening. GLaDOS has betrayed her.

She knew she should never trust a robot.

Ok, ok, just...remain... calm. She took a deep breath, got up and moved to the door. She took note that her portal gun was gone. She tugged on the handle and to her surprise, it open. She looked beyond it and saw an automatic circle door. When she tried to get past it, however, it didn't budge. So she was stuck her until GLaDOS inevitably killed her. She wandered back into the room. It looked exactly like the one she had last woken up in, down to the cabin in the "art" on the wall. The only key differences were a camera installed in the corner of the ceiling and a box on the dresser.

That was odd. Chell grabbed the box and opened it. Inside lay a small, circular device with a wire hanging from its underside. She found a trigger device encased in a small plastic circle at the bottom of the wire and pulled it, the device pointing at the wall. The device beeped loudly and an orange target appeared on the wall on front of her, lingering for a few seconds before fading away. When her heartbeat returned to a normal pace, Chell pulled the trigger again. The target appeared again. It looked like it was made of light. She pointed it at the chair in the room and pulled the trigger. The device made the chair light up and beeped again.

It seemed to be a device meant to communicate location, but what she would need that for, who knows. She sat down on the bed, relieved to see she was still in her comfortable, beat up, dirty, worn out orange jumpsuit. It remained tied around her waist, and she almost laughed when she realized that, somehow, a chunk of the hubcap was still attached to it. The rest must have broken off. She took it off the sleeve and turned it over and over in her hand. She heard static and jumped back, crouched in an attack position on the bed, facing the door. The crackling ceased.

"Welcome Back." A voice said. Her voice, Chell realized, a sinking feeling in her stomach. "How have you been? I've been busy." GLaDOS said. Chell stood and looked up at the camera, her expression demanding and angry.

"You're probably wondering why I brought you back here. I didn't do it because I want to kill you. I did it because I need your help."

* * *

**AN Does this seem choppy to anyone? I think it's choppy.**


	6. Reunion

**AN HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH HELL YEAH. I HAVE GOTTEN OVER A PLOT SPEEDBUMP. KIND OF. NOT REALLY. Mostly just...actually just ignoring it...for...now. Yeah. Anyways, here's chapter six, once again I do not own jack shit and it is all VALVe's**

* * *

The lights came on in occupied Relaxation Vaults precisely 12 hours after Chell's arrival. Chell sprung out of her bed immediately upon the room being flooded with artificial daylight. Shes stretched and shook off all remaining grogginess. She had said that the next time the lights came on would be when the Plans went into actions. Chell had no clue what they were, but she could handle it. She remembered GLaDOS's words. _We may have more things different than in common between us but I know there is one thing we all like. Revenge. This is your opportunity. You help me, you get your revenge and I let you leave. It's a win win, and it's even two-sided this time!_

She still didn't trust the AI, but she knew if she wanted to get out she'd have to play along.

Chell started trying to smooth out the wrinkles in her jumpsuit. Meanwhile, Wheatley was still sound asleep in his Vault. Claws came down from the ceiling and removed the IVs from his arms. GLaDOS's voice echoed through his room, much louder than usual and shook him awake. "Unless you want me to throw you into an acid pit I suggest you get up." Wheatley nodded and stood up. He had spent hours yesterday practicing motions and could now walk back and forth across the room without falling and stand without wobbling.

GLaDOS spoke again, this time her voice very official and broadcasting into both chambers.

"Today you have been selected to take part in a new Aperture Science Official Testing Experiment. You are the face of the Human Cooperative Testing Initiative." Chell looked up at the camera. She'd heard of that. The two robots made to test as partners... the ones who dragged her here.

"On the dresser, you will find a small box. Within the box lies a small device. Please remove the device." Chell already had hers, so Wheatley walked to the dresser and opened a small box he was sure had not been there yesterday. He found an odd circular thing that looked like it had tail on it. He held it cautiously, fearing it might explode in his face or something similar.

"Good. In the closet you will find a pair of Longfall Boots specially made so that you humans can fall from great heights and not have every thin, weak bone in your tiny bodies break." Chell rolled her eyes and moved to the closet. She almost smiled when she saw he old Longfalls resting there, deadly laser scorch on the left one and all. She slipped them on and was relieved at the feeling of her body bounding on the springs at the end. Her feet went comfortably into the position with the raise heel. She twisted her foot around. Still fit perfect.

Wheatley, however, took about 5 minutes trying to get the straps right and once he did, he tumbled over immediately upon standing. Walking around normally was hard enough, why elevate him and put a spring on the back of his calf? The men's Longfalls had a shorter heel than the girl's did, only about 3 inches compared to the 5 inches on the girl's. He did get them on however and managed to get into a standing position. The legs of his jumpsuit covered the top of the boots, unlike Chell, who had just finished neatly tucking them into the boots to keep the fabric from snagging on anything. GLaDOS chimed in again.

"Please proceed out of the Aperture Science Test Subject Relaxation Vault and through the door. Enter the elevator at the end of the hall." Both Chell and Wheatley walked out of their rooms, Wheatley having to balance on the wall, Chell stopping to jump in place in her boots a couple time. They felt more natural to her than her bare feet did, which was odd but not unexpected, considering how long she had worn them. They both proceeded into their separate elevators at the end of the halls. Chell stepped inside and stood straight in the middle, ready to dart out when it stopped. Wheatley got in and leaned back against the wall. He was exhausted and his headache was starting to kick back in. He rubbed his temples with one hand. He already felt a little worse and he'd only had the IVs for ten minutes. It only seemed like a matter of a few seconds before the elevator slammed to a hault.

Chell looked out from the glass walls. Did the elevator get stuck? She looked around and saw she was stuck in the elevator tube with a bottomless pit below her. Perfect. She looked all around her and noticed another elevator shaft. With a human in it. Where did she find someone else?

"Hello, and welcome back to the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center." GLaDOS said. "Today, you will be testing with a partner. Please wave to your partner."

Wheatley opened his eyes. Right in front of him was another elevator like his, with a girl inside it. He squinted at her. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail, her orange jumpsuit was tied around her waist. He stared at her. It couldn't be... She waved to him and he continued staring until GLaDOS sharply reminded him to wave to his partner. He repeated the gesture Chell had made and the elevators continued down, stopping in front of 9 panels.

"the upcoming tests require you to work together as a team. To facilitate collaboration, both of you are now in possession of a Ping tool. Blue, please use your Ping tool to select your favorite animal by pointing the device at your selection and pulling the trigger." Wheatley looked around blankly until Chell tapped sharply on the glass of her elevator. He watched as she held up her Ping tool, pointed it at the panels which had now changed to show animal silhouettes, and mimed pulling the trigger. She then gestured to her jumpsuit and pointed at him. He looked down. Oh, right. He was in a blue jumpsuit.

He bit his lip and took the odd device out of his pocket. He pointed the open end at a random square and pulled the trigger. A blue light target bloomed out from the device and landed on the top left corner, which had some odd bird looking thing on it. All the other panels blacked out again.

"Really? Ok...Orange... please observe your partner's...er... interesting choice in a favorite animal. Good." The elevators went down to another 9 panels wall, this time they lit up with letters and numbers. "Orange, please use your ping tool to select your favorite element from the periodic table." GLaDOS said. Chell thought about it for a moment then selected Au, Gold. It was the only one she knew. "Good. Blue, please obeserve your partner's favorite element." The elevator dropped and the bottoms opened, dropping both lightly into a room. Chell's had an orange Aperture logo on the floor, Wheatley's room on the other side of a wall had a blue. They both walked forward.

"Your Ping tool can also be used to indicate to your partners where you would like them to place a portal. For the sake of this test, I will pretend to be your partner. Use your Ping tool to indicate where you would like me to place your two portals." They emerged into a room with a large glass wall dividing it in two. Both could see the other through it. Above, on a platform, a Portal gun appeared on both sides. Chell looked around, then aimed her Ping tool at an angled platform above the gun, and another on a white wall in front of her. A red and yellow set of portals appeared. Chell went through the yellow portal and dropped neatly onto the platform with the gun.

"Orange, please place the ping tool onto the podium." Chell set it down on a small rectangle next to the gun. Both dropped into the floor and emerged a few moments later, only the gun remained.

"Orange is the first to acquire a Portal gun. Your Portal gun and Ping tool have now been combined into one device. To activate the Ping tool, press the button above the grip on the backside." Chell looked, and above the handgrip was a small red button she could hit with her thumb. She gave it a tap and the Ping tool made a target in front of her. She stood on the platform and turned back to watch her partner, who was still standing there staring at her.

Truly, he had been watching how gracefully she moved through the chamber. She rapped on the glass and tapped her wrist to tell him to hurry up. He clumsily copied Chell's movements, tumbling out of a purple portal onto the platform housing the gun. He placed the Ping tool on it upside down and they disappeared, reappearing after only a few seconds. GLaDOS repeated her speech about the combined devices.

"Now let's see if you can actually figure out how to use a Portal gun. But of course you've seen how they work. Hopefully you're not too much of a moron to figure it out." she said. Chell could practically hear the smug dripping from her voice. Well, she definitely did not like this guy.

"Will you stop callin me a moron? It's your fault I'm even here!" The man she was partnered with said. Chell paused in her movement to the next chamber. He sounded funny. Like a memory from somewhere...maybe before Aperture. Maybe this man was someone she used to know. She waited for him to appear in the next chamber.

"Test your device by portaling up to that ledge up there." GLaDOS instructed. Chell turned to look at the man, who had accidentally placed both portals next to each other. She turned away and portaled up the the ledge. She saw the man copy her movements and they both moved to the next chamber. Wheatley looked around and saw a glass door at the end. There was a button to his left, with dots on the floor leading to a blue X. He experimentally stood on the button and heard a door open.

"Calibrating Blue's weight." GLaDOS said. He remained on the button, looking around for what it had done when he saw Chell run through the now open door on her side of the glass wall. He got off the button and looked around for an exit.

A cheery "Calibrating Orange's generousness" combined with the door on his side opening echoed through the chamber. He rushed through the open door, stumbling a bit.

"Variances detected. Orange is slightly over the average weight. She may want to consider trying to drop a few pounds." Chell ignored her and got off the button. They both moved down into the next section of the chamber. There was a tall ledge in front of Wheatley. When Chell waited for him to emerge, she pointed the gun at the wall in front of her and pressed the red button.

An orange light target appeared on the wall above the ledge. Wheatley pressed himself against the wall and pulled the top trigger, sighing in relief when a blue portal appeared. He turned and saw a portal wall behind him. He pulled the trigger and a blue portal appeared. Dammit. He put the purple portal above the ledge and stumbled out onto the ledge. Lo and Behold, another glass wall. He looked around and saw Chell through a rectangular hole in the glass. He watched her as she smiled smally at him. He tried to grin back, but was too busy still trying to absorb the fact that she was even there to know if he was successful. He didn't notice her placing her portals on both side of the glass wall until she moved up to the window and slammed her fist down on the glass loudly. He snapped out of his trance.

"WHA-oh. Right. Sorry." He chuckled nervously and went through Chell's portals, tripping a little between them. Chell frowned. This man didn't seem like he would be a very good testing partner. He was a klutz. And his voice...

They both moved to the next chamber. Here, both sides had a pedestal button and a cube receptacle. Chell hit the button, hoisted the cube up and dropped it in the receptacle. Wheatley's door opened. He copied her motions and they both moved on. He emerged in a chamber with another window and a button. He hit it and a cube dropped into an acid pool on the other side of the glass just before Chell reached it.

"Nice catch, Orange. Very agile and precise movements." Chell shot the GLaDOScam a glare and Wheatley hit the button again. This time she caught the cube in the gun's tractor beam, looked around, and dropped it through the window to Wheatley's side. He flipped the little trigger on the belly of the gun and the tractor beam picked up the cube, something he had discovered he could do in the last chamber, when Chell had held her gun up and tapped the trigger to show him. He moved up and handed it back to Chell after she passed to the end. She dropped it in the receptacle and they moved on. With Chell's generous use of her Ping tool and Wheatley's tripping everywhere, they managed to get through this section of the Calibration Course. Then Chell hit a button at the end. Platforms swung up, allowing them to cross an acid pit and be face to face for the first time.

Wheatley stood for a moment and looked at her. She hadn't changed from the last time he saw her, that little piece of her bangs that had fallen from her ponytail was even in the same place. She watched him look her over with a confused look in her eyes. What was _with_ this guy?

"I suppose now is the time for proper introductions." GLaDOS said. Her camera spun and the lens widened to see them both. "Blue, this is your testing partner, Orange. She is very determined and cannot speak. But you already know that, don't you?" Chell was more confused than ever. Was this a man who she used to know? Or maybe a scientist watching her when she first entered Aperture? Had he signed her up for the testing?

Wheatley swallowed hard. God, that really was her. Why had She put him with the girl he tried to kill? Oh god she wanted Chell to kill him didn't she. That would satisfy her. He felt beads of sweat trickle down his neck. Bloody disgusting humans.

"Orange, this is your partner, Blue. He is not accustomed to this yet, so it is your duty to teach him. You're going to have to, since he's a moron and can't figure it out for himself." Wheatley clenched his fist. He was sick of this! He turned to the camera and screamed.

"I. AM NOT. A MORON. You really expect me to be able to complete all your bloody tests when you just crammed me into a sickly disgusting human body? For gods sake!" GLaDOS's camera turned to Chell and Wheatley heard the AI laugh darkly. He turned to see what the camera was looking at. He swallowed.

Chell was staring at him, eyes wide with a mixture of disbelief and rage. She felt the stab she had felt at Wheatley's betrayal dig through her chest again. It was him, she knew it. His voice, his attitude. His eyes were the same color as the optic of a personality core had been when it was glaring at her, calling her selfish. She set her Portal gun down on the ground and slowly walked over to where Wheatley was standing. He smiled nervously and rubbed the back of his neck.

"Um...h-hello there...I-I um...d-don't know if i-it really, er, m-matters but I am _so s-_" Wheatley stuttering was cut off by Chell's fist colliding sharply with his cheek. He was thrown backwards into the wall. He barely had time to process how much that _hurt_ before he saw Chell moving towards him again, fists clenched and an anger in her eyes like he had never seen. He backed away from her, fear creeping over his entire body. He hit a wall and tried to dart to the side. Chell's hand closed around his neck before he had the chance. He marveled at how strong she was while at the same time panicking at his inability to move.

Chell's hand squeezed tighter around his windpipe, keeping him pressed to the wall and lifting him up a little. Wow, he was unnaturally light weight. Chell saw his eyes fill with panic. The same eyes that had once looked out at her from an optic of a robot she thought she could trust. He was gasping, trying to breath through the chokehold Chell had on him.

"You know, you do need him for these tests. If you kill him or damage him too much, you'll be dead too. As much as you want him dead, he's the key to your survival." GLaDOS said. Chell looked up at the camera and back at Wheatley. She released her grip on him and walked back to where she had left her gun. Wheatley fell to his knees, gasping. Every breath burned like fire.

"Blue, move to the elevators before I throw you in an acid pit." GLaDOS demanded. Wheatley shakily stood up, one hand braced against the wall. He picked up his Portal gun and ignored his muscles as they protested the weight of the device. He moved through the door and down the steps where the two identical elevators sat across from each other. Chell was already in hers. She glared at Wheatley as he entered his with a look that could kill. He slumped over and didn't look at her, but he couldn't hide the red, finger shaped marks on the side of his neck or the red dripping down from his cheek where she had broken the skin with her impact. She felt pride well up in her at what she had done. She saw him collapse against the back wall and close his eyes with a look of outright agony etched across his features before the elevators shot upwards.

Wheatley's portal gun dropped out of his hand, his muscles giving out. He slumped back against the wall. He was in absolute agony. Every muscle and bone in his body was crying out in protest to every movement he made. He groaned, trying to push himself into a standing position only to fall back against the wall again. Everything ached, but mostly his throat, arm, and cheek. He knew there was absolutely no chance of her forgiving him. She tried to kill him the second she learned who he was for godsake. He rubbed the side of his neck. Inhaling hurt a bit.

The elevator stopped and the floor dropped. Wheatley hit the ground gently, but to him it felt like he'd broken every bone in his legs. He fell to the floor with a cry of pain. He huddled against the wall, shaking.

"Blue, you need to stand and participate in your first Science Collaboration Test. Orange needs you. He looked up and saw Chell shoot him a disgusted glare and turn to examine the test chamber. He tried to stand, bracing himself on the wall. He couldn't, however, get the energy to move. Every tiny twist of the wrist felt like he was being stabbed.

"I-I can't..." he said, not looking in the direction of either the GlaDOScam or Chell, who was now standing 15 feet away, watching. He gulped. "I-I can't m-move. It hurts t-too much." Wheatley stuttered, embarrassed of how his voice broke.

"That is expected, you know. I knew you weren't healthy enough for these courses. The strain of physical activity your body is being put through is causing almost 8 times as must the strain it causes on a healthy body. Your body is giving up." Wheatley stared at the camera in shock.

"W-why would you start me testin' if you k-knew I wasn't in good enough shape for it?" He asked, looking desperately at the camera. GLaDOS's voice was dark, dangerous.

"I want you to suffer. I thought I made that clear to you when I brought you back. Let me refresh your memory. You deserve to suffer. Not just because you're a backstabbing evil monster. Not just because you destroyed my facility and nearly killed us all. You're going to suffer for everything you've ever done. From nearly blowing up Aperture, all the way back to when you first applied as a test subject here. Your existence in this facility has caused nothing but disaster and misery. You _will_ pay. For everything. Of course there is an upside, you are making a great contribution to science." Wheatley looked away from her camera and down at the floor.

Chell had to look away from him. In her memory, she could never remember seeing someone look so... defeated before. Then again why did she care? He deserved it. He almost killed her. He wanted to kill her. She wanted to see him suffer just as much as GLaDOS. But she couldn't bring herself to look at him. Not until she heard a muffled groan and turned to see a claw sticking a needle into Wheatley's neck and slowly emptying the contents of a large syringe into his jugular. Some odd clearish liquid. She leaned on the wall and watched as the needle was removed and Wheatley's eyes drifted close.

"Can't you just let me sleep or something so this bloody body won't die on me when I'm stuck in here." He complained, looking up to the camera like a toddler looks at his mother after she refused to give him a cookie until all his vegetables are gone.

"Unfortunately, your death would put a complete halt to this experiment as I have no other test subjects currently available. Tell you what. You finish the 8 Team Building tests, and I'll let you rest for a while." A claw reached down, lifted Wheatley up by his collar and deposited him on the ground in a standing position. Chell ignored the wince he gave when he stood up straight. He took a deep breath and moved towards her. Chell pointed at a button and he stood on it without a single word. His weight barely pushed the button down, she noted.

She ran through the now open door and looked around before putting a red portal on a wall in the room. She looked through the door and pinged another button to Wheatley's left. He moved to this one and another door opened. She held her hand up for him to stay and he looked down, frozen to the spot. She went into the room with the exit and put a yellow portal on the wall. Then she went back in the first room and stood on a button there, which opened the door to the room Wheatley was in. He obediently followed her into the room and through her portals, careful to avoid his eyes and stay at least 8 feet from her at all time.

They moved through the remaining courses in the Team Building course with relative ease, only having problems when Chell's movement required the use of Wheatley's portals. Although she didn't like to, she had to give GLaDOS credit for creating the Ping tool. It was extremely useful, considering her inability to speak. Although even if she could speak she wasn't sure it would help. She'd had to smack Wheatley on the back of the head forcefully on more than one occasion to get him to pay attention. He kept drifting off into space.

They started having some trouble when they came to a chamber with a large glass wall that had a bunch of metal boxes in it. There were two buttons on the floor. Chell stepped on the left, the metal boxes moved down. She stepped on the other and they moved up.

_It's like a maze. One goes in, the other has to get them through to get... what. _She thought. She examined the puzzle again and saw a redirection cube at the end. Simple enough.

"One of us has got to get in there, huh? Do you want to?" Wheatley spoke from behind her. Chell turned to him, her eyes cold. He would crush her if she went in. She stared at him hard. He looked back to the puzzle.

"So, I've got to go in there...right?" He asked, looking into the puzzle curiously. Chell nodded once. Wheatley, happy just to get some form of acknowledgment from her that wasn't a death glare, strutted up to the edge of a pit and examined it. He hefted up the portal gun with reasonably less difficulty than earlier and portaled his way down. He looked up from the bottom of the pit.

"Um... I don't think that this is the right way... This is definitely not the right way to be going here." He called up. Chell looked up at the ceiling of the puzzle and hit a ceiling tile with her ping tool. Wheatley looked up.

"Is that how I get in? Let's give it a try then!" He called again, trying to leak some fake enthusiasm into his voice to distract himself from the fact that his head was killing him. He put a portal on the ceiling and one on the portal wall in the pit. He dropped through and bit his lip when he landed, his muscles protesting. In front of him was a large metal wall. He looked through the glass at Chell.

"Er... now what?" He asked. He watched as Chell moved onto a button and the wall in front of him dropped. He moved or it quickly, praying she wouldn't suddenly jump off and squish him against the ceiling. She moved off the button and the wall moved back up. Wheatley looked down tentatively. He jumped down and back up against the wall as Chell moved to the other button and the wall raised. . He thought for a moment, then put a portal on the wall behind him. He jumped down and Chell got off the button, allowing him to run across the top of it. Chell moved the next one down and he saw only a wall beyond it. He looked at Chell and she gestured with her arms for him to stand on it.

Wheatley stood on the platform and Chell stood on the up button, raising it two spots higher so he was stuck in a boxed in area. She then stomped hard on the down button and it dropped. She then stepped off, causing Wheatley to tumble down and then be hit by a rising platform. She had a satisfied smirk at his yelp of pain and shock. Just because she couldn't lethally harm him because she needed him to get out of here doesn't mean she couldn't have a little fun.

"What the hell was that for?" He whined, grabbing up the Thermal Redirection Cube and getting back on the platform. She just glared at him again. Eventually, Wheatley got back up to where she was and she took the cube from him, lifting it with her arms instead of the tractor beam. She used it to aim the Deadly Laser at a white wall. She put a portal there and one on a wall above her head, making the laser hit a Thermal Activation Target and opening the door.

"I should tell you that this isn't just a game. I'm tracking your progress using Science Collaboration Points. For any time one of you does something to assist Scientific Collaboration, you will receive points. If you do something against Scientific Collaboration, you will lose points. For example, Blue is penalized 50 Science Collaboration Points." GLaDOS finished and Chell turned to see where Wheatley was frozen, poking the GLaDOS cam with the claw on the Portal gun. She forcefully shoved him and sent him crashing to the floor and strutted down the stairs to the elevators. Wheatley stood and turned his shoulder in a circle to lessen the pain caused by the impact.

They moved through the next chamber with ease. Chell was moving a redirection cube onto various receptacles to move platforms and the Spike Plates. "_I still keep these around. They're perhaps the only idea you've ever had that turned out to work."_ GLaDOS had chimed, causing Wheatley to look down and away from Chell and cameras for the rest of the test. Aside from him tripping and having his shin collide with a Deadly Laser, the test went smoothly and without delays. Chell jumped through Wheatley's portal and did a tumble roll as she emerged, standing and brushing herself off. Wheatley was sitting against the wall, holding his leg and muttering under his breath. She looked at him momentarily before moving into her elevator. He got up and hissed at the fresh pain the burn on his shin was causing him. Limping, he managed to get into his elevator and they shot upwards and at one point went sideways.

"Sometimes, I have to require you to step outside the Official Testing Courses. Try not to let the moron fall off a catwalk." GLaDOS said as the elevators dropped them. Wheatley scowled in a random direction, not being able to tell where the voice was coming from. She didn't have any cameras back here. Behind him, he realized, the catwalk was broken and dropped into nothingness. He jumped back, smacking right into Chell. She elbowed him hard in the gut and walked along the catwalk. It wrapped around a room without a door and dead ended. There were pillars she could portal to so she looked for a spot to put the other. She knelt down and scanned the area beyond where she was. She could just see the bottom corner of a white wall. She took careful aim and successfully hit it, a yellow portal blooming. She made a red portal on a pillar and stepped through, Wheatley tight on her heels.

He followed her through the emancipation grill, shuddering as a stabbing pain hit the base of his skull like it did with every grill he walked through. He limped around the room, looking at all the computers and the numbers running across a projection screen. Chell tapped her foot impatiently and he tore his eyes away, following.

They moved to a series of levers, and on Chell's finger countdown, they both pulled them. A door swung open and Chell shot a portal through it right as it closed. She put another on the wall and they went through it.

"I had the other cooperative testers, those two robots you've both met, find a disk to reactivate part of my security software down here. But since that's already been done, just go through the door ahead." GLaDOS said. Chell and Wheatley moved to the door and went through, emerging on another catwalk right next to a wall. There were two doors on this wall about 10 feet apart. One was orange, the other blue. Chell moved past the blue to the orange, opened it and went inside. She emerged into a small room, about 10 by 12 feet. This room housed a smaller GlaDOScam in the corner, a closed off toilet under it where it couldn't see, a radio playing the same god awful tune the rest did, and a bed. There was a cubby space in the wall with a scaled down Vital Apparatus Vent in the top, obviously to deposit things into the room. The walls were white save for a strip of orange running around it, about 3 feet up from the floor. It only went around 3 walls however, and Chell noticed that the wall her bed was pressed against was made of glass, like walls in the Calibration Course had been.

Through this glass wall, she saw a room exactly like hers, only with a blue strip on the walls. She saw Wheatley move into the room and drop the Portal gun on the floor. He yanked his longfall boots off and winced as the straps made long scrapes down his legs. He collapsed onto the bed without looking around and seeing the glass wall Chell was watching him through.

She watched him for a while and when she was sure he was asleep she gently set her beloved Portal gun down on the floor. She smoothed her hand over it almost lovingly. It was bizarre to not be holding it. It felt as much like part of her arm as the longfall boots felt like part of her legs. She slipped them off and stood them neatly against the wall by the gun. She moved quickly to the bed, not liking walking on her bare feet. She got on top of the covers and turned to lie on her left side, facing away from the glass wall. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, sinking into the bed.

Her mind was racing with the events of the day. Theories, Facts, mostly Questions though. Such as why didn't GLaDOS warn Chell she was going to be stuck with the man who betrayed her and tried to kill her as a testing partner? Not only did she want to strangle him every time she looked at him, but he was nearly useless. Clumsy, too fragile, weak, annoying. He was pathetic, really. He obviously wasn't healthy at all, or rather his body wasn't. She felt almost disgusted knowing that GLaDOS had taken some poor human and jammed a monster into it. Which led to another bunch of questions. Who was this man before Wheatley had been forced into him?

And even more confusing, how had GLaDOS even manage to _do that?_ Putting a robot into a human, it was beyond her. She knew that humans could be put into robots, like Caroline and GLaDOS, but getting them back into a human? But she didn't even know if Wheatley ever had been a human or if he was entirely artificial. Chell sighed and got up, moving to the radio. It was still playing that horrible tune. She took it and sat down on the bed. She closed her eyes and though back to when GLaDOS had woken up. One of the test chambers... there was a radio. She played with the frequency, changing it to 83.7. A soft piano played out. A small smile ghosted over her lips. She set the radio down by the bed and lay down, her eyes drifting closed. Her mind was still ringing with the countless questions she couldn't voice. But for now, she shoved them to the back of her mind and concentrated on the music, finally drifting off to sleep.

* * *

**AN... Er... I quite literally have no idea...where I'm gonna take this story or how long it will be running. I have a vague idea, but other than that, it's all improv. So bear with me.**


	7. Beginning

** AN" Why was not letting me upload this sooner? Who knows. Want to clear one little thing up, **

**Anon and TheJennaMonster and anyone else wondering, this is not gonna be some sap-ass romantic thing. This is about trust issues. And Chell having a grudge but being unable to completely destroy the person said grudge is against. And Wheatley being...Wheatley, and trying to somehow get Chell to trust him and get his shit together at the same time. So there's that. Oh! And I got that typo fixed, thank you for pointing that out!**

**One more thing, A giant, humongous, massive thank you to StarInk10 for providing the light at the end of the tunnel, AKA how to actually...er... make this story work. So here we go! All belongs to the VALVe Overlords.**

* * *

_"YOU'RE JUST MAKING ME STRONGER, LUV!" He shouted. That was a lie. The core bloody _hurt_. It felt like it was stabbing a dagger into his brain. He shouted various things at her as she ran around his Lair, avoiding bombs and searching around for a place to put another portal. He readjusted his bomb shields and watched. _

"_Remember when I told you how to find that little portal thing you love so much? Thought you'd die on the way, if I'm honest!" She gave him an odd look, one mixed with sorrow, fear, and anger. She hit him with his own bomb. He rebooted and felt another stabbing into his head. It was driving him mad._

"_And another thing! You never caught me! I told you I could die falling off of that rail AND YOU DIDN'T CATCH ME! Didn't even try! Oh it's all becoming clear to me now! Find some dupe to break you out of cryosleep, give him a sob story about escaping to the surface. Squeeze him for information on where to find a portal gun! Then...then when he's no more use to you, he has a little accident, doesn't he? Falls off his management rail! Doesn't he!" His voice was cracking and becoming hysterical. Fires were starting to seep in from the panels, and he was worried about it igniting the neurotoxin flooding the air. "You're in this together, aren't you?" he screamed, looking at her and trying not to let his terror show. Chell looked at him with what almost looked like pity. Pity and sorrow. _

"_**She's your friend, remember? She wanted to help you. Look what you've become, you're giving her no choice! Your life or hers!" **Wheatley shoved the voice in his head to the back of his mind, its interference making him more determined to kill this little jumpsuited monster._

_He started rambling off about how Chell and GLaDOS were against him, that this was all a trick. They were just all against him. She put another core on him. She bolted for the small spot of conversion gel left under him and hit it with a portal. She ran to the stalemate resolution button and put another portal on the ceiling._

"_I FORBID YOU TO PRESS IT!" He screamed. He was hysterical, shouting at her. The bombs exploded and she was thrown out of the room. For a moment, he though she was dead. Then she got up and grabbed her portal gun. She looked up at him, swaying a little. A large cut on her head was leaking blood, as were multiple lacerations covering her exposed skin._

"_**What have you done..."**_

"_You had to play bloody cat and mouse didn't you! While people were trying to work! Well now we're all gonna pay the price! BECAUSE WE'RE ALL GOING TO BLOODY DIE!" He shouted at her. This was her fault. She distracted him. He could have fixed this if she hadn't been there. She looked up at the moon, and then back at him. She aimed pulled the trigger. He heard a small "plink!" and the floor underneath him opened, sucking everything in like a vacuum. He screamed and saw Chell being pulled towards the hole. Wheatley was pulled loose from the chassis, only held on by a wire. Chell scrambled around and grabbed onto his handles. The two were pulled out into space. He'd never seen Chell look more terrified in the time he'd known her. He wondered vaguely how she hadn't died immediately. Seconds later, he was being yanked out into space, screaming._

"_**She's dead now, and it's all your fault. You're a monster."**_

"AHHHHHHHH!" Wheatley awoke with a scream, bolting upright. He was panting heavily, his breathing shaky. He buried his face in his hands, than pulled back to look at them. He sighed in relief. He was still a human, which meant he wasn't in space. Chell wasn't dead, he wasn't either. He gave a desperate, shaky laugh. He was actually grateful that he was a human right now. He fell back into the pillow and closed his eyes, trying to regulate his heart rate and breathing.

"It's...it's ok Wheatley... You're alright. Nothing... nothing can get at you right now. You're not going crazy, the facility is not about to explode." He swallowed. "S-she's alright... she's not dead. She's safe. You're safe... everything is gonna be just. Fine." He threw his arms out and nearly screamed when his left hand smacked into something. He looked over and saw Chell lying there with her back to him.

When in the bloody hell had she gotten there? He stared at her sleeping form in confusion before reaching out to try and shake her awake to ask what the hell she was doing in his room. His hand collided sharply with a glass wall. He pressed his hand against it and looked around. Oh. There was a glass wall between the two rooms. Ok. That made more sense. Wheatley looked at Chell again and sighed, lying back down.

"_Look what you've become, you're a monster." _Wheatley stared up at the ceiling. His damn conscience was impossible to ignore in this body. When he was a core he still had it, but at least he had the option of temporarily deleting it. Now, he was stuck with it, and it loved to remind him every time he so much as looked in Chell's direction of what a horrible person he was. He glanced over at her.

"Look... I know you won't listen to any attempt I make at apology, and frankly, I don't blame you." He said to the darkened room. "But... just... I am sorry... for everything." He didn't really have a reason for why he was apologizing to Chell when she was unconscious, but he couldn't get his mouth to stop now he'd started. "I was bossy, and monstrous, and just the absolute worst type of person. I don't have a lot of things on my list of things I regret, in fact I think the only thing on there is "Knocked Alan the Kindness Core off his management rail. But then again I really don't regret that all that much. Right proper jerk, he was. Should have been called the Rudeness Core. Knocked him into a bottomless pit. Deserved it.

"So I suppose the only thing I truly regret... is everything I've done to you. From the second that core transfer happened. And I do wish that had never happened. Being in Her body was marvelous. I had the entire world at my command, I could do anything I wanted. But at the same time it was bloody terrifying. I always felt like...like something was pulling my mind apart and making me go mad. Which I did, didn't I? I did go mad... I couldn't help it. All I wanted to do was test all the time for the rest of time.

"I... I turned into a monster. I was so obsessed with testing, addicted you could even say. I wanted to kill the one person who I had ever been able to call a friend. I tried to _kill you." _Wheatley sniffed and swallowed as an uncomfortable lump appeared in his throat. He though for a moment he was going to suffocate until he realized his breathing was just fine.

"I know you hate me. I completely know it and you know what? You're exactly right. Hatred is the proper reaction towards someone who tried to kill you. You're right. You've been right all along.

"She's going to kill me eventually. I know that. But She wants me to pay for everything else first. Then she'll kill me. And looking back, I deserve it. I deserve to be dead. I could have killed both of you. But... before I'm um... killed... I'm going to get you out of here. I swear on my life I am going to get you out of here. For good. Figure after everythin, it's the least I can do." Wheatley sighed sadly. His fate was completely clear. He'd be stuck here in Aperture for the rest of his short, sad life. Testing day in and day out until he either dropped dead of his own accord of She decided to murder him. He looked over at Chell again, watching her stir in her sleep. He felt a pang of sorrow hit him in the chest.

"I'm so sorry Chell. Genuinely, I am sorry. I know you're not even conscious right now but I hope that somehow... you'll be able to tell how sorry I am" He lay there, thinking and staring at the ceiling for a while before falling victim to exhaustion.

* * *

When the lights in the rooms were turned on a few hours later, Chell immediately jumped up and hopped off the bed, looking at the camera in the corner. Wheatley stayed asleep. She knocked on the glass, trying to wake him up. Didn't work. She full on punched the glass. Nothing.

"You know what I heard? I heard that morons are so thick-headed they can sleep through anyth-" GLaDOS's words were cut off by a loud train horn echoing through the chamber next to where Chell stood. Wheatley screamed and jumped up, tumbling off the bed. GLaDOS snickered to herself. "Guess my facts were wrong." Chell bit her lip trying not to grin.

"Anyways, back to science. Today, you will be testing along side the Robotic Cooperative Testing Initiative. You have 5 minutes until I forcefully take you out of this room so I suggest you start getting ready. Oh, and one more thing." A ding sounded from the left and Chell turned to see a little package sitting underneath the mini Vital Apparatus Vent. She picked it up. "Aperture Science Test Subject Nutritional Sustainability Bar." She ripped the package open. It looked like some kind of mushy granola bar. She took a bite. Hm. Tasted like cardboard. She shrugged it off and quickly ate the rest of it.

She sat on the bed and grabbed up her longfall boots. She rolled up the legs of her jumpsuit and her fingers trailed over a blotchy scar on the outside of her knee. She had four of these scars. She shuddered lightly as she remembered that the old longfall boots hadn't even been boots but just the spring bolted into your bone. Last she had knowledge of, the old springs had actually been torn out of her legs when she was dragged back into this place. A day didn't pass where Chell wasn't grateful that Aperture had made the heel spring into a boot. She tucked her jumpsuit into the tops of them and hopped to her feet, bouncing lightly.

She looked over to where Wheatley sat on his bed, pulling them on with a somber, almost depressed look on his face. He winced when the strap scraped over the 4 inch burn crossing his shin bone from his run in with a laser the previous day. It stung like hell. He completely ignored what was now sitting under the mini Vital Apparatus Vent, sneaking a glance over at Chell instead. She was crouched in front of the small table in her room, adjusting the knob on one of those obnoxious radios. She adjusted the knob then placed her hand on the top in an almost loving gestures before standing up and stretching. She turned around and caught Wheatley's eye. He looked away immediately, picking up his portal gun from where it was lying on the floor. He looked at it like it was going to blow up in his face. He walked over and smacked his head against the wall, groaning miserably.

Chell looked away and walked over to her portal gun. She picked it up tenderly. It had a smudge of something on its side, probably from her longfall boots. They had tipped over on top of it last night. She spit on the gun and buffed it clean with the sleeve on her jumpsuit.

"Blue, Orange, it is now time to exit the Aperture Science Cooperative Testing Dormitories. Exit the room and go down the hall to your right." GLaDOS said. Chell was out the door and starting down the hall before Wheatley had even touched the doorknob. As a result, she reached the glass panel door before he did. She had to wait for him to catch up before it opened and when it did, she got inside first.

The first thing she noticed were two large circles on the ceiling that looked similar to Vital Apparatus Vents. She then turned to her right and emerged in a large, open-topped room. The strip of floor she was walking on went out into the room and then took a left, ending at a staircase which led up to a Test Chamber door marked "1" Eight Orange and Blue rectangles were light up above the door with an icon of a robot next to them. Underneath was another set of Orange and Blue rectangles, only these had a human icon next to them. Chell assumed that meant they had done those tests.

"Welcome to the Hub. Here is a direct route to every one of the Cooperative Testing Courses. You will be sharing the Hub with the other Cooperative Testing team. In fact, they should be arriving here in 3...2...1." A hissing sound came from behind them. Wheatley and Chell whipped around and saw the two Vital Apparatus lookalike vents dropping two robots onto the ground. Chell recognized them immediately. They were the ones who had dragged her back here. Wheatley recognized them too, a sinking feeling setting into his stomach as they brought back the memories he'd much rather forget.

_You've probably figured it out by now, but I don't need you anymore!_

"Orange and Blue, meet Orange and Blue. Or to make it less confusing for you to contemplate, ATLAS, P-Body, meet The Crazy Mute Girl and the Moron." GLaDOS said. Her voice echoed throughout the Hub. P-Body waved at them and spun around. Chell almost smiled. They were like children, really, she thought as she scooped up ATLAS and spun him around in a hug.

"I'd get to know them now. You may just end up stuck with them in the future." ATLAS had moved over to investigate Wheatley, who just stood there awkwardly. He waved to the robot.

"Uh... Hello." He said. ATLAS jumped back and moved his arms around in some sort of ninja attack position, his optic shutters narrowed. Wheatley stared at the robot then looked over to Chell, his expression clearly asking what the hell just happened.

Chell was preoccupied though. P-Body was dancing around in front of her, giggling to herself. Chell smiled slightly at the oragne bot. She was kind of adorable, actually.

"The Robots will be Team One, the Humans, Team Two." GLaDOS said. "Team Two has already finished Testing Course Two." Chell looked around and saw another Chamber door, this one with a "2" above it. All eight orange and blue Robot rectangles were lit. "I suggest Team One gets a move on. We can't afford to wait forever." Chell hit the side of the door with a portal, then put her other on a patch of white panel on the L bend of the Hub flooring. She tapped Wheatley on the shoulder and gestured sharply to the Portal.

"Wait... just... wait one minutes, I've almost got three in a row!" He whined. He turned back to P-Body. "Paper, Rock, Scissor, Shoot!" He stuck two fingers out to imitate a pair of scissors and P-Body's hand moved out into a flat position. Wheatley grinned and jumped up and down.

"Haha! Yes! Three in a row! Who's the best, it's me!" P-Body covered her optic with her hand and shook her head sadly. Chell grabbed the back of Wheatley's collar and threw him through the portal. He landed on his hands and knees and Chell followed after, landing upright. He brushed himself off.

"I can just bloody walk you know." He said. Chell ignored him and looked up at the sign. It read. "Mass and Velocity." A grin crept onto her lips as she remembered her first encounter with this type of thing. _Speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out._ If there was one thing to like about testing, it was dropping down and flying through the air. The door opened and she ran inside. A panel opened on the wall and a screen with two buttons appeared. It was set to 8. Chell hit the buttons until it went to 1, assuming it was numbers for the test chambers. She went to the elevator room and saw the human elevators as well as a larger chamber for the robots. Wheatley climbed into his elevator. Chell turned to him and he smiled. Rather sadly, if you asked Chell's personal opinion. She shook it off and climbed in her elevator. They shot off towards the chamber. She would sort out what the hell to do with him later.

They arrived in the first chamber and Chell looked around. Flat panels, high platforms. Easy. She pointed up to an elevated platform and Wheatley looked up.

"Oh, I've got to go there? Alright. I can do that... Um... let's see here..." He looked around for a place to put his portal. Chell silently cursed him in her head and put her portals there, literally shoving him through. She put her portals in place to launch him and gestured for him to jump. He looked carefully over the edge.

"Um... you...you want me to, to fall. In there? Just fall down into that...portal...there?" She nodded in exasperation. Wheatley nodded, squeezed his eyes shut and jumped, screaming. He was still screaming as he flew over to the platform opposite where he had been. He collided painfully with the wall and let out a loud stream of curses.

"Ok, I'm here now!" He called. Chell portaled up to where he had been. She was directly across from him now and she saw a red button. She aimed her Ping tool and the button lit up with orange.

"Alright, I am getting on this button. See what it does. Something exciting I bet." Wheatley said. He hopped onto the button. "Aaaaaand... Nothing. Well what's the point of that then?" He started to walk off of it, but a firm gesture from Chell made him stop. "Alright then... I'll just stay here. Right here. No movement whatsoever." Chell was slightly happy and slightly irritated that he was back to his old habit of just talking. Non. Stop. She launched herself over to a lower platform. This one housed another button. She stepped on it and an Edgeless Safety Cube dropped from a Vent. She hopped down and saw that it had landed directly in the receptacle. She smiled smally. Less work for her. She looked up and saw Wheatley looking down at her.

"You look so small from here! Positively tiny!" She just looked blankly at him and gestured for him to follow her.

"I... Have to... jump? Do I? Have to jump down...there? That long ways down to the ground?" He asked, peering cautiously over the edge. Chell nodded and gestured again. Wheatley bit his lip and walked off the edge, hitting the ground lightly. He opened his eyes and stood upright. He laughed once, then started laughing more.

"I'm not dead!" he said, laughing. "These things are cool!" He tapped the side of his longfall boot. Chell would never admit it, but she came dangerously close to smiling when he said that. She rocked back on her heels, the spring bending a little under her weight. She looked up at the ceiling, thinking of how many times these boots had saved her life. She looked back down to find Wheatley gone. She spun around and saw him through the door, a slightly amused look on his face.

"Well come on then, we don't have all day." He said. She glared at him and went through the glass panel door with him to the next part of the chamber.

In a way, she had to give him credit. He was trying as hard as he could to make their forced cooperation as normal as he could when she knew it was driving them both mad. Judging by the flashes of guilt and sorrow that played out over his features whenever GLaDOS made a comment about what he had done, when he saw ATLAS and P-Body, and sometimes even when he just looked at Chell, this experience was just as unpleasant for him. Of course she didn't like it either, but from her end, she was just mad. Mad and wanting to get him back for it. Yet now, she felt a tiny sprig of guilt at being constantly angry towards him. From his speech last night when he presumed she was sleeping, (Chell was a very light sleeper and awoke instantly when she heard him scream,) he seemed like he truly regretted it.

But she knew better. She knew not to trust him. Use him to get out alive. That was all he was, a tool for her survival. She didn't need to trust him.

They moved through the next few chambers fairly quickly. Wheatley was starting to enjoy soaring through the air. He even did a flip flying out of a portal once. They reached a chamber with a what looked to be a rising platform and a laser receptacle. But where was the laser? Chell heard a slam of metal against metal behind her. About 10 seconds later she heard it again. Wheatley gently elbowed her arm.

"Um... might wanna look at this." He said. Chell turned and saw him staring at something, fear written on his features. She followed his gaze.

Oh boy.

Ahead lay a hallway, where rows of metals plates with spikes on them were slamming together. And of course, the laser was right in the middle. They came closer and closer until they hit the end of the hall. Wheatley jumped back a few feet.

"Do you like them? I decided to keep them after I repaired the damage you caused. They're actually quite useful. It's an entirely new way for humans to die." GLaDOS said, her voice cheery. Chell saw Wheatley look down, the guilt showing again. Why She felt the need to tell him about how She had kept the mashy spike plates Wheatley had made specifically to kill Chell with, he didn't know. But he didn't need to keep hearing it every time they entered a chamber with them.

The plates slammed together again and Chell swallowed. She took a look at the test chamber. One of them would have to go in there and redirect the laser. She could make Wheatley do it, but he was clumsy and would probably get crushed before she got the chance to...she looked around. Ah. The chance to launch herself into that faith plate. Which would send her to a button at the end of the mashy spike plate hallway. But he could always just not jump and let her be crushed. Or she could make him hold the box up, which would result in him getting crushed and her being stuck here forever.

She swallowed. She was faster than him and more coordinated. She would have to go in there. She looked around and put her portals where, when she directed the laser, would get it to hit the Thermal Discouragement Beam Receptacle. Which would then raise that platform, hopefully high enough to Wheatley to be able to launch himself. She looked up and saw him still staring down the spike hallway. She waved her hand in front of his face, then pointed him over to the rising platform. He stood on it.

"Um, so what do I do here?" He asked. Chell pointed at the platform and then made a gesture to imitate lifting something up.

"Alright. This thing rises. Good... How does that help?" Wheatley asked. Chell sighed and hit the ground in front of him with her Ping tool, then up on the wall. He put his portals there before he realized what she wanted.

"Oh! I've got to launch myself onto that faith plate there, haven't I? Oh that's brilliant!" He said with a smile. "But... how do we make this thing go up in the air high enough for me to do that? I mean I could just jump it, but I'm not exactly high enough am I? Maybe there's a hidden pit or something somewhere for me to fall into, then I can fly into it! That would work, ri-" His words were cut off as he stumbled backwards, the platform rising up. He looked around and saw Chell's portal gun on the ground, and Chell in the spikey hallway, directing the laser to the receptacle.

"What are you _doing?"_ He shouted. Chell turned. The spike plates were one row away from her. She squeezed her eyes shut. Right then, Wheatley jumped, hitting the faith plate and gliding over the plates into a button.

"Chell, you can put the box down now." Wheatley said. Chell opened her eyes and saw the spike plates frozen less than a foot from her on both sides. She dropped the cube and spun around. Wheatley was standing at the other end of the hall, rubbing his nose and glaring at the button. His glasses were skewed on his face and he clumsily fixed them, still getting used to always having them on. She ignored the fact that he just saved her life and darted back to get her portal gun.

They finished the next test, which happened to be outside the course. With much more difficulty. It involved Wheatley sailing into a button, Chell flying and catching a cube, Wheatley flying through a giant fan Chell had stopped with a laser. (A fan that that he had collided with head on, knocking the wind from him.) Then they had to direct the laser to a fan shutdown in the room Wheatley was now in. They got it turned off, and Chell launched herself into the air. Wheatley watched from the fan bay as she soared gracefully and expertly through the air. She folded her arms to her side and got through the fan without impact, doing an aerial somersault and landing on the ground, Portal gun held to her chest. Impressed Wheatley clapped, but a glare from Chell immediately stopped him.

Wheatley followed Chell up a metal staircase and into another office room. This one was set up sort of like a theatre, with two rows of chairs seated in front of a projection screen. Chell looked around and Wheatley collapsed into a chair, loosening the straps on his right longfall boots. The burn from the laser had been hurting more and more as the day had gone on. He investigated his wound, trying to figure out if it would kill him.

Meanwhile, Chell was wandering around the rest of the room, looking at the various computers and other pieces of equipment. Nothing held her interest for more then a few moment. She moved things around, looked behind furniture and such. She found no doorways to other halls, notes, or anything of interest.

She moved over to where Wheatley was seated. He was biting his lip and trying to figure out how to get his longfalls to stay on yet not rub against the giant laser burn he had. Chell inwardly cringed. Those were not fun. She noticed a white board in the front of the room and went to investigate. It was scrawled over with mathematical equations and notes. She pulled it away from the wall and looked on the back of it. She heard Wheatley cry out in pain and furniture moving around. Probably nothing, he just tripped again, Chell told herself.

To her disappointment, the whiteboard had nothing on the back. No bizarre drawings of a cube with angel wings, no large angry looking words, nothing. The obviously crazy man who's hideouts she kept finding every once in a while must not have been in this part of the facility.

A dark shape caught her eye just to her left. She looked over and saw the projection screen. It hung about 5 inches from the wall. A dark blob was just behind it. Curious, she walked over and pulled the projection screen's cord. It shot upwards and rolled neatly into its casing, revealing what lie behind it.

A navy blue sheet of paper was pinned to the wall, about 5 feet by 4. It was covered in white lines dashing all over it. Chell stepped back from the paper and the lines became visible as highly detailed pictures. The blueprints for some sort of large machine. There was a picture of a small rectangle entitled "AI Transferrable Microchip" with a bunch of scrawled out numbers and phrases around it. A line led from it to another drawing, this one much larger. It showed a faceless figure covered in wires surrounded by machinery. The figure had wires mainly attached to their head, all leading back to the microchip drawing. Chell followed another line down from the chip to another drawing. This one of a large machine suspended from the ceiling. Chell felt a chill run down her spine as she realized what she was looking at. Written across the top of the blueprint was the title "Human Transfer Process." Chell swallowed. _Caroline. So this is how they did it..._

"That information is classified, you know. You shouldn't be looking..." GLaDOS paused. "Orange is penalized 100 Science Collaboration Points for standing and staring at an old worthless piece of paper while her partner is very obviously in distress." She chuckled quietly and Chell whipped around.

Wheatley was huddled into a ball on the floor, his chair toppled over. His knees were drawn up to his chest and he was clutching his head as though it might explode if he didn't. Chell stood where he was, watching.

"I have to say, I expected your moronic brain to move much slower than this." Wheatley looked up, his eyes slightly bloodshot.

"Not a moron. Head hurts massively." He winced and clutched his head again. Chell sat down where she was and watched him. He began whimpering quietly, holding his head tighter. Chell could make out quiet whispers coming from her partner. _Stop it. Who're you? Stop, Stop. _Chell sat against the wall and waited. There was nothing she could really do anyways. A while later, the whimpering subsided and Wheatley slowly raised his head, his hands shaking. He was a sickly shade of white and his eyes were still bloodshot. Chell stared at him, wondering what just happened. He swallowed and spoke quietly.

"W-who's Doug?" He asked.

"What was that?" GLaDOS asked.

"Who is D-Doug?" Wheatley asked again, his voice slightly louder.

"I assure you I have no idea what you mean." GLaDOS said.

"Ok, t-then tell me what the _bloody hell just happened."_ Wheatley said, his voice rising an octave.

"Presumably, you just had a memory flashback. Your tiny moron brain is absorbing the memories this body has. Of course when you were transferred out of it, your memories were left behind seeing as how having any recollection of your human life would hinder scientific process."

Wheatley sat there, stunned. "So...what I just...saw. Really happened?" He asked.

GLaDOS sighed. "Yes. I thought I made that apparent already." He was slow, wasn't he. GLaDOS looked at the monitor showing the two humans. Chell was still looking at the idiot as though he was some sort of parasite. Which he was, so GLaDOS didn't really mind it. She set up and recorded their conversation. To her good luck, Wheatley was now rambling off the details of his flashback.

"There was this man there, really scraggly looking, kinda looked a little off his rocker of you ask me." Chell stopped fiddling with the claw on her gun and looked up at him.

"And he was standing with this other guy, and they both had white lab coats on. So I'm pretty sure they were scientists. And I couldn't move, so I'm fairly sure I was a core, then. This time... I think it was when I was first activated. But they asked me some stuff and I started rambling and what I said doesn't even make sense to me. And I said it! I think I mentioned the surface though...someone named... oh what was it...Carol? Something like Carol." Chell visibly stiffened. GLaDOS put her full attention on the talking human.

"Anyways, they called me by some name I'd never heard of, and then the scraggly looking one mentioned something about how I had a nickname... Apparently people who knew me would call me Wheatley...so I guess we know where I got that from... They told me I was the new Intelligence Dampening Sphere for the GLaDOS project. They asked me questions and said that I would have to be tampered with... I was too clever or something." He laughed weakly. "Then they shut me off...and that's where it stopped..." He looked over at Chell for a moment.

"Do you think I'm going mad?" He asked. "I mean is this what's supposed to happen?"

"As you are the first Core to be placed back into its original body, I don't know. Every minute of your current existence is an experimental process. Although there have been many hypothesizes I've come up with for what would happen, you've so far only managed to prove one of them correct." GLaDOS said. "We'll just wait and see what happens. For now, you should probably get out of this room. The nearest elevator is at the end of the next hallway. Mind the plants everywhere, I haven't sent the others to clean it up yet."

Chell assumed she was talking about ATLAS and P-Body when she said "The others." Not like there was anyone else here. She stood, glancing at Wheatley.

He'd managed to get himself to a standing position, leaning heavily on a file cabinet and keeping all his weight off his right leg. He looked up, his eye catching the blueprint. He stared at it.

"I... I think I've seen that before..." He said. He was starting to creep Chell out a bit. They need ed to get a move on. She walked over and scooped up Wheatley's portal gun, holding out to him, her expression vacant. He tore his eyes from the blueprint to look at Chell. He took his portal gun and cradled it to his chest.

Chell nodded her head towards the door and they both set off through it. Chell had to go slower than she would have liked due to Wheatley's limping growing worse. She found an open door to her right and wandered inside. Another old office. Nothing too fasinating here. She set her gun down on the desk and looked around. She opened drawers and felt around in them, finding a handful of paperclips and a couple clipboards with more equations scrawled over them. Not what she was looking for.

She moved to the file cabinet. She opened it and found two small boxes. One was just an old computer like the ones she'd seen in those odd little hideaways, the other a small black box. She set it on the desk and opened it. Success. She took the box over to where Wheatley was sitting on a table. He looked like he was about to be sick, his skin had even picked up a faint greenish tinge to it. He looked up at Chell. She gestured for him to take his longfall off.

"What, do you want to trade or something? I don't quite think we're the same size there. So that's not a good idea." Still, he reached down and undid it, pulling it off. she instructed him to pull the leg of his jumpsuit up and prop his leg up on the table. He did both.

"Sorry, but what exactly am I supposed to be doing here?" He asked. Chell took a small aresol can out of the black box, shook it up, and sprayed it on his burn. He hissed at the contact at first, but then it started to feel what he presumed to be a cold sensation, chilling the area the laser had hit. He stared at Chell.

"How did you just... Were you a scientist or something? Biologist, maybe?" Chell looked at him like he was crazy and handed him a small tub with the lid taken off. He looked at the label, pretending to read it.

"Oh, yep. I see exactly what this does. Brilliant little...tube thing." He said. Chell rolled her eyes and turned to tube over in his hand so the words were facing the correct way. He still failed to see what it was. (Machiavelli. Sure.)

Chell took the tub and squeezed the contents out into his hand, then gestured at his injurt again. He nodded in understanding and smeared the stuff over the burn. It almost instantly stopped stinging and the pain almost completely evaporated. He was so busy marveling at the fact that a little gel could even do that that he didn't notice Chell wrapping a gauze bandage tightly around it until she had pinned it in place and thrown his boot into his chest.

"You really should stop hitting me with things, you know. It does hurt. It is painful." Wheatley said. Chell leaned against the wall after retreiving her portal gun and watched him get his boot back on. She didn't like him, she didn't trust him, but like it or not, she needed him to get out of here. And if an injury slowed that process she was going to do her best to fix it so she could get out faster. Wheatley stood and smiled gratefully at her, his face still pale and his eyes still bloodshot.

"That feels _so_ much better. Thank you, really." He said. She didn't respond, instead leaving the room with Wheatley behind her. They emerged in a darkly lit hallway. The first thing that caught Wheatley's eye was the management rail running across the ceiling. He felt a dull ache in his chest, remembering the days when he used to zoom along those rails. He'd been on this one too, he realized. Quite recently, and with the same girl he was with now. He looked at the dilapidated "Bring Your Daughter To Work Day" banner and cringed. He'd been attached to GLaDOS that day. He could still hear their screams.

Chell knew GLaDOS must have led them down this hall for the sole purpose of attacking her partner with more painfully memories. She looked over and saw him gazing sadly at the management rail in the room. He sighed and looked down at the ground, walking towards her. He moved past her then tripped about 5 feet ahead. He shouted loudly in pain as his injured leg collided with the floor. He looked in front of where he was seated on the floor for what he'd tripped over, seeing it was a thin root of some sort. He followed it up to where it was attached to the giant potato on steroids. He got to his feet and went to investigate it. Another potato battery, of course. He examined the board, seeing the usual crap the kids had written on every project until something caught his eye.

He looked over to Chell. She was examining what looked like a Flux Capacitor somehow still running on a potato battery.

"Um... Chell?" Wheatley said. She looked over to him and he pointed at the board. "Take a look at this." Chell gave him a confused glances and walked over to the monster potato plant. She knelt down and looked at the board. Right in front of her were the words "By: Chell" in the bottom right corner of the board. She stood up and stared at it.

"You never told me your parents worked here." Wheatley said. Chell could do nothing but stare at the board. How she passed this the first time, who knows.

"...Chell?" Wheatley asked, his voice laced with concern. He caught a glance of her face. She was staring at her name written on that board as though she couldn't believe it.

"Look, maybe it's a different Chell. Maybe...there was a girl named Michelle somewhere and that was her nickname. And this is hers. You don't know for sure that it's yours." He said, but Chell ignored him. She was lost in a memory.

She was remembering the singing turrets. Their song...the words had felt familiar to her in a way she couldn't describe. Something was tugging at the back of her mind, willing her to try and recall where she'd heard those words before. She was certain she knew them. Something in her past was linked to those. Which meant something in her past was linked to the song. Which tied her right into GLaDOS and to Aperture.

Her head suddenly ached.

And her name on that board... she knew it was hers... she remembered something, faintly.

"_I'm home! I brought you something!" A woman's voice. Soft, sweet, caring. A lovely voice. A warm sunlight room, a blurry outline of a woman walking towards her. Placing a box called "How to create your very own potato battery!" in front of her. "This is going to be so fun! You'll like science. Just like me." _

Chell jumped back from the board as if it just tried to rip her head off. Wheatley looked at her in alarm.

"Are you alright? What happened?" He asked, approaching her. Chell moved away from him, gun raised as though to strike him with it, the worst glare she could muster on her face. He stepped back.

"Sorry, sorry... But... what just happened? Honestly that was a little weird of you." He said. Chell ignored him and stormed down the hall until she found the elevators. She jumped inside and leaned against the back wall, her blood boiling and uncertainty tying a knot in her stomach.

Aperture Science was nothing but a tangle of mysteries and stories to unravel, and now, she realized with a sickening feeling, she was right in the middle of the web.

* * *

**And so, the tangled mess this story is thickens further...**


	8. Redemption

**AN: Wow. This was a lot harder to write than I expected. **

**I promise, in the future these chapters will be longer. I swear it. **

**Again, all belongs to the overlords at VALVe**

* * *

When Chell and Wheatley returned to the hub, they came not by the glass panel door that led to the dormitories, but by P-Body and ATLAS's tubes. Apparently GLaDOS had multipurposed them. They were deposited on the ground, their landings not quite up to par. Wheatley stumbled over like he usually did, but to her own surprise, so did Chell. She tripped over her own feet and ended up stumbling against the wall. Wheatley watched her with concern. Something about her name on that Science Fair board had completely shaken her up, but she didn't even seem to know why. Or she did know and just refused to tell him. It wouldn't surprise him if that was the case.

Wheatley followed Chell to the L bend platform and nearly bumped into her when she stopped unexpectedly. She shot him a glare and resumed looking around. She saw that all eight orange and blue "Team Human!" rectangles were lit up above the Course 2 door. She began looking around for the third door, not seeing it anywhere. Wheatley saw it before she did. It was very high up and had a portal surface above it. Wheatley figured you could portal onto it, then drop down onto the platform. And if they didn't go to that door...well they'd figure something else out. He wasn't even sure it was door 3. The crack in his glasses made it a little difficult to make out even when he squinted. He hit the space above the door with a portal and was about to put one on the ground when a loud crash rang out from behind him.

He and Chell whipped around, only to see the noise was caused by a metal catwalk up on top of one of the walls breaking. Apparently the weight strain of two metal Cooperative Testing Robots was more than it could take. ATLAS and P-Body were standing on the broken catwalk and staring at each other, chattering quietly. Wheatley smiled at them.

Chell, wanting to see what reaction it would cause, stuck two fingers in her mouth and let out an earsplitting whistle. Wheatley jumped away from her, startled. Up on the catwalk, ATLAS had jerked around so fast at the noise he had tumbled backwards, causing the catwalk to groan as the metal was warped more. P-Body looked down into the Hub and saw the source of the noise. She began waving animatedly at them. Wheatley smiled a little more and waved back, causing P-Body to shriek happily. ATLAS popped back up and saw Wheatley and Chell, waving as well.

"Oi! Come on down here then, you'll fall right off the catwalk otherwise!" Wheatley called up. ATLAS and P-Body looked at eachother, she flashed him a thumbs up and they both jumped over the edge and into the Hub. ATLAS landed smoothly on the platform. P-Body hit the edge of it with one foot and tumbled over the edge. Wheatley clapped a hand to his mouth to keep from screaming. Chell stared down into the pit where the bot had fallen.

A mechanical whirring came from the entrance to the Hub, and they all turned to see P-body neatly deposited out of the orange tube and onto the ground. Chell stared at her, mouth hanging open slightly. Wheatley looked like he was staring at the second coming of Jesus Christ. P-Body ran up to them and waved, her lower optic raised up, making her look overjoyed and adorable. She was nearly knocked over the edge again by ATLAS, who had charged directly into her and was now hugging her tightly.

"You know, the reassembly machine has better things to do then reassemble you every few seconds. How is it you manage to die in the Hub more than in any of the test courses? And stop doing that! I told you to stop with those human actions. You look ridiculous." GLaDOS said, obviously irritated with the two robots. Chell was a little amused by their antics. They stopped and looked at the two humans in the room. They started chattering to themselves and then chattered louder, talking out into the room.

"I don't care if you've never seen them hugging. These humans don't like eachother. Other humans do hug and it's disgusting, which is why I don't want that and other stupid human actions to corrupt you. I don't even know where you learned how to do that." GLaDOS said, answering the robots. Chell and Wheatley exchanged an awkward glance.

GLaDOS wasn't completely wrong. It was clear that Chell wanted nothing to do with Wheatley. But she had been plural with her word choice, indicating that he felt the same towards Chell. Which he didn't. He actually rather liked the scarily determined mute, and admired her in more ways than one.

"Team two, you'll be taking a break from testing for now. I have a special assignment for you two." GLaDOS opened the wall behind the tubes, revealing two of the human elevators. Chell stomped off towards the elevators without hesitation, her expression stony. Wheatley watched her go and sighed to himself. She was already being distant and cold towards him and now it seemed to have worsened tenfold.

Whatever project this was, it was not going to be fun. He sighed again and shuffled over to the elevators, his shoulders slumped. He got into his elevator and stared at the ceiling and the floor, anywhere just as long as it wasn't in front of him was fine. He didn't want Chell to murder him with a glare.

The elevator deposited them onto a catwalk that led into a control room.

"The turret redemption lines are just up ahead. There's been so much garbage and leftover junk from That Episode-We-Are-All-Familiar-With that I've been putting some of it here. Unfortunately, combine a lot of garbage with almost 4000 defective turrets and the lines clog up. Your job is to unclog the redemption lines and make sure everything goes through to the incinerator smoothly. Oh, and I added a floor to this area, to make it easier for you to remove everything" GLaDOS said.

Chell walked out onto the catwalk and looked down. Indeed, the bottomless pit that used to be below the lines was gone and had instead been replace by panels. Panels which were 99% covered in useless metal shards and broken turrets. She sighed heavily. GLaDOS just wanted to make every single aspect of her life more difficult, didn't she.

"Why don't you just have those two bots you've got do this?" Wheatley asked, his voice carrying a hint of adolescent annoyance.

"Have robots unclog a redemption lines that takes robots to be incinerated? Really, what kind of monster would I be if I put them through that." GLaDOS said, her voice sickly sweet. Chell turned to look at the freshly installed camera in the redemption line chamber, slightly confused. She sometimes acted like the Orange and Blue robots were her children. Which made sense if you think about it, she did create them.

Shouldn't that mean that every robot in Aperture was her "child?" then? Chell thought. After all, GLaDOS _was_ Aperture. Which meant that every robot in the facility was under her control and in a way, her care. Chell thought back to the turrets they were about to send to the incinerator. Their childish high pitched voices were now reminding Chell of what she thought a little 7 or 8 year old girl would sound like. An image popped into Chell's mind of a bunch of little girls being thrown into an incinerator. She shuddered, remembering what Wheatley had said about Bring Your Daughter To Work Day.

She thought back to her name on that board. She hated believing it but she knew that is was indeed, her name. So somehow, someone must have gotten her out of there before she could be killed with the others. Or maybe she had gotten out herself. Hell couldn't GLaDOS just look up tapes of that day and tell her what had happened? Maybe she set this whole thing up, put a fake project with her name on it, injected fake memories of lullabies and a woman's voice. Lord knows she has the power and technology for that sort of thing.

Chell felt a bubble of self-induced rage rising up inside of her towards the Supercomputer, along with a self-induced headache. She walked into the control room and mentally groaned. All along the conveyors that were the turret redemption lines, piles of rubble were stacked up to 4 feet high, the largest piles being at the incinerator entrance. The belts were just skidding along under the piles, not moving a single thing. Wheatley walked into the room as well, staring at the clutter.

"Bloody hell. How are we supposed to fix this? We can't even get onto the belts to fix it!" He said. He was right, the catwalks that led out next to the lines were completely blocked off by pieces of metal and glass. Chell knew how to do this from last time though, and she put a portal on the wall above the first line, then one on the wall in the control room. She was about to walk through when she heard a lurch of machinery malfunctions. She turned around and saw Wheatley standing at the control panel, his hand on a lever. He looked at her.

"What? Thought it might be a good idea to stop the lines from moving while we're working, that way no one gets sucked into the incinerator when we get all the crap off this thing." He said. He walked past her and out through the portal, stumbling on the unsteady rubble. Chell watched him, in slight shock he'd thought of something she hadn't. She followed him out onto the track and looked around, her hands on her hips. Wheatley looked around as well, then looked down at his portal gun. He turned back to Chell and held his hand out.

"Lemme see your gun." He said, tucking his under his arm. Chell's eyes narrowed and she clutched her gun to her chest. Wheatley sighed.

"Look I'm not gonna break it or anything, I'm just gonna... you know what? Watch, ok? Watch." He walked through the portal back to the control room and set the gun on top of the control panel. He put his hands up in the air.

"See? Now I have to hands to work, and two hands are better than one. I think. I'm not really well rehearsed in human lingo and...uh...catchphrases. And all that." He walked back to the lines and held his hand out again. Chell shot him a look that clearly said you damage my gun I throw you in the incinerator, but she handed him her gun. He set it down on the chair instead of where his was.

"There. It's safer now." Wheatley said as he climbed back through the portal. He asked what the plan was, but his foot slipped into the rubble mid-sentence, so it came out more like,

"So, um... what's theOH FOR GODS SAKE WHY DID SHE MAKE US WEAR THESE BOOTS FOR THIS?" Wheatley fell backwards and landed in the rubble, his foot still stuck in the pile. He was vaguely reminded of a little kid getting their foot stuck in snow and falling backwards trying to get it out. Then he wondered what snow even was. He got his foot out and saw the heel spring was caught on the leg of a turret. He yanked it off and threw the turret towards the control room.

"Stupid turrets...causing me problems when they're already dead." He grumbled. Chell on the other hand was looking at a very large mostly open space in front of the control room. She picked up a chunk of metal and threw it over there. Then she threw more.

"What are you...oh! I get it! Get all the crap off of here so we can get it moving! Then are we just gonna throw all the crap back on here when it's moving?" Wheatley asked, tripping over a large piece of metal and glass. Chell nodded once to him and gestured to the chunk of crap he was standing on. He hopped off of it and Chell moved to grab it. It was a bit too heavy for her though.

"Here, lemme help move this...oh." Wheatley grabbed onto it and started helping Chell lift it, only to realize with a sickly feeling in his stomach that it was one of the monitors he had used that Chell had shattered. Chell observed this change in him, she saw his skin pick up a faintly greenish tinge to it, like he was going to be sick. Chell looked down and recognized the piece of machinery.

_You're gonna test, and I'm gonna watch. And everything will be just. Fine._

She looked at Wheatley again. He was still oddly green and he looked like he was about to cry. She gently nudged the monitor into his stomach and he snapped out of his trance. They threw the monitor off the track. Wheatley threw it with all the force he could muster, sending it spinning. Chell watched as he stormed back to the rubble pile and began launching things into the pile, his expression a blend of anger and sorrow.

She noticed the purple splotches that dotted his arms. She looked down at her own. She was covered in bruises as well, but not as many. She saw him wince as a turret fell off the pile and landed on his wrist, where the portal gun had chaffed his skin. She felt absently at the cloth wrapped around her own wrist to keep it from doing just that. She decided Wheatley was a complete wreck of a human being.

She started grabbing up as many chunks of old monitors that she could, which admittedly wasn't more than half, considering her fairly small size. She was only about 5 foot 7 after all. She pretended not to notice when Wheatley would sneak a glance in her direction. They worked in silence for a long time, the only sounds being the ones the rubble made when it was picked up and thrown into the ever increasing pile in front of the control room.

Chell took advantage of the rare silence to think. She focused her thoughts not on the confusing, head-ache causing mystery of her past but instead on the scrawny weakling of a man standing 5 feet from her.

What was she supposed to think about this guy? GLaDOS said she brought Chell back because she needed her help to get revenge on him. Chell was supposed to help Wheatley get through all the Cooperative Testing Courses, and then she would let Chell go. She said that her plan was to keep Wheatley here and test him for the rest of his life, although Chell didn't know it was him until after the Calibration Course when she almost choked him to death. After that, the uncontrollable anger started. At the time Chell found a lifetime of tests a wonderful plan. She hated Wheatley with a passion. He had betrayed her. He had become her enemy. He tried to kill her for his own benefit. She had felt an anger in her like she'd never felt, not even towards GLaDOS and frankly, it frightened her. She had honestly wanted to choke every last drop of life out of him.

She remembered when she had first seen him. She was shocked at first to see another human. For all she could remember, the only life she knew was Aperture, and the only human she knew was the crazy man who drew on walls. But she'd never actually met him. And while she had quickly composed herself enough to complete the course, she couldn't hide the shock that there was a living, breathing _human_ in Aperture besides herself. Then she discovered who he was and felt a sting of betrayal. Not because of Wheatley, but because of GLaDOS.

She gave her freedom, snatched it away, and now expected her to work with a man she hated. As the tests went on she found that her rage towards Wheatley had decreased and been replaced with rage towards GLaDOS. In fact she'd actually begun to feel sorry for Wheatley. As they went through chamber after chamber, she began to remember when she'd first met Wheatley. How he'd tried to help her escape from GLaDOS. And it almost worked, too. The realization that she still cared about him was like a punch in the gut because she wasn't supposed to care about him. Yet she did, because like it or not that idiot was the only friend she'd ever had.

She looked over to where he was struggling to remove a defective turret that was still talking from the rubble

"Oh boy, this is some dangerous stuff here! Do I have a gun? The turret clicked its side guns fruitlessly. "Oh crap." It said as Wheatley tossed it into the pile.

"Obnoxious little buggers." He said, shooting the turret a glare. Chell turned away and smiled smally to herself. She had a bit of a soft spot for the crap turrets. They were funny and they had the most obscure way of speaking, like they were a bunch of teenage boys. She smiled wider, now visualizing the defective turrets as a bunch of teen boys running around and hitting each other with rocks. She giggled to herself silently, biting her lip to try and get herself to stop. She heard a shift of metal to her right and her head shot up. Wheatley was sitting on one of the broken monitors, staring at her.

"Don't mind me. It's just rare seeing you actually smile and I wanted to take advantage of the moment." Wheatley said, cocking his head at her. Chell's smile quickly turned to a glare. She reached down, her eyes locked with his, and picked up a side gun from a turret. Wheatley's eyes followed her hand and barely had time to register what it was before he found it colliding with his shoulder. He yelped and tumbled backwards, falling down the pile. Chell turned away and focused on removing a chunk of a wall panel from the rubble, hiding her now red face from Wheatley when he decided that standing up would be a good idea.

How dare he mock her for having a rare moment of happiness? It's not like they were a common thing in this hell hole of a facility. She couldn't remember the last time she'd even laughed. She wasn't sure if she ever had. There was nothing to laugh about. Not in prison.

That was exactly the right word. Aperture Science was a prison. And when prisoners escaped from prison, they were brought right back in unless by some miracle they managed to get far enough away. Chell swallowed. This was worse than prison. Even if she did escape, GLaDOS had the two robots. She could never go far enough. She would always be a prisoner. She looked down at her tank top, the Aperture Laboratories logo right there on her chest in black and white. She belonged to Aperture Science Laboratories.

Unknown to her, Wheatley had been watching as Chell mentally discovered her fate. He had climbed back on top of the rubble heap and seen her furiously throwing pieces of wall at the pile. He winced as one hit the glass of the control booth with unnecessary force, causing a crack to appear in the glass. He unconsciously fixed his glasses, his hand brushing over the crack in the lens.

He'd had a bad run in with a button earlier that day that had caused another crack to branch off of the original one. He had wanted to ask GLaDOS to fix them, but upon realizing she would probably break them further decided against it. After all it was no where near as bad as when his entire optic was cracked. Although it did make stars look cool.

Another piece of wall smacked against the glass and Wheatley jerked his head up. Chell was about to throw another piece of wall into the pile but something stopped her. She held the piece and looked down at it. Wheatley craned his neck and was barely able to make out the piece of the circular Aperture logo on the metal shard she gripped in her hands. He wondered why she was suddenly so interested in the Aperture logo, he'd caught her staring at it a few times in the last hour.

Not like she didn't see it everywhere you looked in this place. Everything in this place was branded with that logo, even him. His hand brushed over the embroidered Aperture logo on his right sleeve. He'd never seen a single thing in this place that wasn't branded with that logo.

He turned his gaze back to Chell and had to bite his tongue from gasping in shock at what he saw. Chell's cold exterior had vanished. She gazed down at the broken piece of the Aperture logo with a look Wheatley had never seen on her before, even with all she'd been through. Wheatley realized with a clench in his heart that Chell was wearing an expression of absolute hopelessness. He watched as she looked down at the Aperture logo branded on her tanktop. She closed her eyes and threw the metal shard into the pile. She took a deep breath and composed herself. When she opened her eyes again, her vacant, hard expression was back and the vulnerability Wheatley had glimpsed was gone.

From then on, they both worked in silence, lost in their own separate thoughts. Chell was thinking back on her short stint as a free woman, living on the surface. Wheatley was having another guilt trip about being the reason Chell was stuck here. The room was silent except for the occasional chatter of a crap turret. It was slow going, but after a few hours they eventually cleared both lines, having put everything on them in the middle. Chell motioned for Wheatley to stay in his place where he was perched on top of the rubble pile. He nodded once and looked down. Chell paused and shot him a confused glance he didn't see. He didn't say a single word for the past 3 or so hours. Which was unusual. Really, really unusual.

She went back to the control room. The portal was out of her reach, so she had to clamber over the piles of crap to get into it. She saw her portal gun resting safely on the chair. But just to check, she picked it up and quickly inspected it. It suffered no scratches, smudges, or dents. She smiled and gently set it down, moving to the control panel where Wheatley's was teetering on the top of it. She looked around for the lever to turn on the redemption conveyors but stopped and looked at the gun. She carefully picked it up and set it gently next to hers on the chair.

She returned to the panel and found the lever. She looked out the (recently cracked) control booth window and saw Wheatley wave at her. She wanted him to have given her a thumbs up, but after practice it became clear that he could not figure out how to move his fingers like that. He waved again, a spot of bright blue on top of a pile of grey. Chell thought he looked extremely out of place there.

She pushed the lever up and heard the familiar whirring of machinery starting up. Wheatley was grinning through the window.

"It works! The lines are clear!" He said. Chell nodded and went through her original portal set, dropping right onto the now moving redemption line. She scrambled off of it and to the side.

"Who knew I would be able to help get this thing working when I'm like this, huh? I mean I knew that you could do it but I had no idea I could! I tell you if there's one good thing about being stuck in this smelly body, it's having arms and legs. And hands. Hands are quite wonderful as well. I think I did pretty good! I did do alright, right? I mean I'm still not used to being like this so I understand if I'm not totally useful for this sort of thing." Wheatley said. He looked up at Chell like a puppy looks at it's owner. Chell nodded once at him and started throwing the rubble onto the now moving conveyor belts in front of her.

Wheatley grinned to himself and began throwing things as well, chattering to fill the silence. Chell wondered where his sudden nonstop babble had come from. While she did appreciate the eerie silence being filled by something that wasn't the sound of machinery, hearing Wheatley go off on some core named Alan for the third time in less than an hour was starting to get on her nerves.

The only other benefit to Wheatley's seemingly non-stop talking-then-get-embarassed-and-have-current-dialogue-turn-into-foot-in-mouth-syndrome was that it made time go by faster. It seemed to Chell like only an hour had passed before they had gotten to the bottom of the pile, all the rubble had been smoothly traveling along the redemption belts to the incinerator. She worked mechanically for most of it. Pick something up, throw it on the line, repeat.

She did feel a tiny pang of guilt every time she threw a defective turret and it was still shouting things at her. So she decided to block out the chatter from the crap turrets and the clumsy babbling idiot behind her who kept getting his longfall heels stuck in various metal objects. She concentrated on her strongest memory to distract her. She was almost smiling as she worked, her head full of dancing wheat fields and pre-wrapped cakes.

She worked in a relatively content little bubble of Surface Memories, clearing the area until they could see a majority of the floor. That is, until Wheatley misjudged his throw of a crap turret and it smacked her in the back of her head. Instantly the Surface Bubble vanished and was replaced with a sharp pain on her skull. She clutched her head and spun around to give Wheatley a glare. He smiled awkwardly and stumbled over to retrieve the turret. He picked it up and scuttled back out of reach of her clenched fists.

"Sorry! Sorry, didn't meant to! My foot spilled and it flew in the wrong direction! Like a crazy person...or...turret. Crazy! Mad! Insane! You know what I think it was? I think it was the turret. It can't be thrown in a straight line, you know?" Wheatley babbled, avoiding looking at Chell's very apparent scowl. He apologized over and over until he was interrupted.

"Hey! I know you! You're that guy with the lady friend who saved my bacon! Yeah! You're that guy!" The crap turret in Wheatley's hand said, it's broken optic light fluttering on and off excitedly. Chell stared at the turret in Wheatley's hand, while he just looked at it like it was crazy.

"What the hell are you on about?" he asked the turret.

"You're that guy that was babbling when the lady brought me into that room with that annoying guy who repeated himself a lot. Kept calling me "template." I kept saying "Hey pal, not my name." tried shooting him. Didn't work. Asked him for bullets, still didn't work." it said. Wheatley rolled his eyes.

"Yes yes, I remember you, you irritating little bugger." He threw the turret onto the redemption line. It landed with a loud _thunk_ and a shout of "Danger! Better open fire!" Wheatley turned away from it and grabbed more trash from the floor. Then, the metal was knocked out of his hands and he was shoved forward. He fell to his knees and looked over his shoulder in a panic, wondering if maybe Alan was back from Android Hell for revenge and other obscure ideas. He looked up onto the conveyor above him and saw Chell running down it, then diving forward at the incinerator entrance. He staggered to his feet and shouted.

"CHELL WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" he said. For a moment he'd thought she'd gotten so sick of him she'd rather be burned alive. Seconds later Wheatley was proven wrong as Chell leaped off the turret redemption lines, the defective turret he's just thrown clutched to her chest. She looked at it for a moment then turned to look behind her. Nodding once to herself, she leaped back onto the track and traveled down it until she could jump on top of a metal box.

"Chell! Where are you going?" Wheatley said. He tried to jump onto the redemption line but wasn't able to get onto it. Climbing back onto the catwalk, he went back into the control room, grabbed the two portal guns and went through Chell's portals. He quickly followed her down the track, across the metal box and onto the other track. He landed on it just as she was climbing off and ran to the other end, tripping on various chunks of metal. He moved to where Chell was going, not looking around. Next thing he knew he was tumbling down through the air.

He didn't even get a chance to scream before his feet hit metal mesh. Shaking, he looked down. Oh. Metal. Catwalk. Good. He sighed in shaky relief. Thank god for boots. He looked around at the dimly lit hall of sorts he'd landed in. The catwalk he'd landed on was entirely surrounded by large metal cargo boxes, stretching up farther than seeing allowed. Peering over the edge, Wheatley saw that the boxes went down as well. About 40 feet below, he could slightly make out another catwalk. A little further on, it all faded into yet another bottomless pit. He swallowed and walked slowly along the catwalk.

"C-Chell? Are you here?" he said, his voice wavering as a chill ran over him. This area gave him the creeps, like something would come along and envelope him in darkness. He moved around the corner a little quicker. His shoulders sagged in relief when he saw that familiar orange jumpsuit in front of him.

"Hey lady, mind putting me upright? This is a little weird." the crap turret said. Chell ignored it, searching around for something. 14857, 14853, 14859! Her eyes lit up and she set the turret on the catwalk. She climbed up on the edge of it and stretched upwards. She grabbed onto one of the cargo boxes and pulled. The front of it swung open. Chell was greeted by a blinking red light and a small voice.

"I'm different." the little turret said. Chell smiled at Prometheus and grabbed her up. She jumped down onto the catwalk and set it down across from the defective turret, which she'd named Pal, because he kept calling everyone that. She liked it. It fit his sentient personality. He was her little pal.

"Thank you." Prometheus said. Pal's optic blinked unseeingly.

"Woah woah, who are ya pal? Can't see a thing! Hey, squeaky voice, what just happened?" Chell frowned. She cocked her head and looked at the turret for a moment. She put her hand on top of it and roughly smacked it in the back of the head.

"Ow! Hey what was that for?" he clicked his side guns fruitlessly. Chell frowned. She picked him up and looked into his side. She could see all his inner mechanics thanks to his white armour being missing. She squinted and looked right behind his optic. A few stray wires we hanging behind it. She stuck her hand carefully behind Pal's optic and grabbed onto one of the wires. She bit her tongue in concentration and peered behind Pal's optic with one eye.

"Hey hey hey! What are you doing! I work fine I swear! I'm not defective! Watch! _Hellooo!_" Chell grinned at his poor imitation of a working turret. She squinted hard at the wires and stuck on into a little port behind Pal's optic lens. Nothing. Frowning, she looked again. A small, blue wire port was visible. She withdrew her hand and saw a thin blue wire. That had to be it! She grabbed carefully onto the wire and stuck it onto the port. Sparks shot off from Pal and she quickly pulled her hand out.

"Hey. HEY. WHAT ARE YOU DOING THAT HURTS!" Pal shouted. Prometheus blinked at him. The sparks stopped and Pal's optic light flickered on.

"Woah! I can see! They did remember to give me eyes! Oh this is awesome! Hey, hey! Why are you here. Who are you?" Pal asked the turret in front of him.

"Prometheus was punished by the gods for giving the gift of knowledge to man..." she said. Chell smiled affectionately at the little turret. Now she had to figure out what to do with these two. She looked back up to where she had hidden Prometheus the first time around here. She couldn't take them into the next room because of the Emancipation Grill, and she couldn't get back up to the conveyors either because she had no place to put a portal and get them up there. The cargo box would have to do until she could come back and get them again. She picked up Pal.

"Oh hey! You're the lady right? Man you look so weird! You're human right? I'm a turret." Pal said. She smiled at him and nodded. She tucked him under her arm and climbed back up to the container's open door. She gently set him down inside.

"Hey pal what's goin on here?" he said, his optic pulsing as he looked around with his wide turret's range of view. Chell jumped back down and picked up Prometheus. She leaned on the rail for a moment, holding the turret in her arms. Her laser blinked uselessly. Chell placed her hand on the side of her gently. This little turret had been her Oracle. A warning of what was to come. The turret had helped her piece the puzzles together bit by bit.

"Caroline can't hide forever." Prometheus suddenly chimed up, causing Chell to jump slightly. She looked down at the turret in shock.

"Don't make lemonade!" she chimed out again. From behind her Chell heard Pal shout out something about "squeaky-voice."

"The answer is beneath us. There you'll find it." she said. Chell waited for her to speak again, but she just blinked at her. She looked at the turret again before hugging it to her chest tightly. Chell tucked Prometheus under her arm and climbed back up to where Pal was now living. She set Prometheus down inside and jumped up. Chell hoisted herself into the box and sat on the edge, her legs dangling out. She positioned the two unusual turrets so they were facing outwards. With a heavy sigh, she looked at the other two.

"Hey, why the long face pal?" Pal said. She looked up at him and shrugged. "You worried about something? I am a very good listener. And talker. But not a shooter. I am not a good shooter. No bullets! Shooting blanks. All the time." Chell shook her head no.

"Ah. Well, whatever it is, you'll work it out! Hey you managed to get me workin so you can do it!" Pal said. Chell smiled, a genuine smile, and picked up the little turret. She hugged him to her chest and planted a kiss on his armour-less head.

"Aww shucks Lady, now you're gonna make me blush!" he said. Chell giggled silently and set him down in his previous position. She jumped down from the box and landed on the catwalk. She clenched her right hand instinctively and immediately noticed something was wrong. She'd come down here without her portal gun. She huffed and rolled her eyes at her own stupidity. She turned to walk back to the other end of the catwalk.

Right at that time,Wheatley walked around the corner. He'd been hiding so as not to intrude on what he thought must have been a private moment for Chell. He heard her jump down again and decided to reveal himself. What he did not expect however was that he would nearly run into her. Luckily Chell stopped on time. She gave him a look at clearly said What The Hell Are you Doing.

"Chell! Hi! Um... you're probably wondering...what it is I'm doing here. Well, I saw you run off and I thought 'oh, she'll be right back.' So I waited and then, you didn't come back, so I came over here, and now here we are!" he said, smiling nervously. Chell glared at him and looked down. She saw her portal gun in her hand and quickly snatched it up. Pushing past Wheatley, she went back to where she had dropped down here. She looked around.

If she wanted to ever get back up there, she could climb it. But it would be difficult, even for her. Which meant Wheatley would have no chance. Once again, she fired every curse she knew at the idiot in her head. She walked back over to the other section of the catwalk where Wheatley was standing. The only way out was the turret testing room ahead of them, which of course had an emancipation grill at its entrance. The wall behind it was portalable, but if she went through her other portals would vaporize.

"We've got to get in there, somehow." Wheatley said. He stood with his gun under his arm, staring at the room. His eyes lit up.

"Wait! Wait! I have an idea!" He dropped his portal gun and pried open a cargo box.

"Wait, no, not this one." he moved to the next box and found nothing again. He yanked a third box open.

"Haha! Yes! This is perfect!" he said. He crawled into the box, reappearing with an Aperture Science Computer Information Drive. Chell looked at the box in his hands. She'd seen plenty of them in the hideaways in the test tracks. She looked at Wheatley curiously. He grinned mischievously and flung one at the wall directly above the emancipation grill. Chell jumped at the loud cracking noise it produced, looking at Wheatley like her was crazy.

"Look, if we can break through that wall up there somehow, then we can put portals through it and not go through the grill! Well, you can put portals there, then I can go through, put a portal in that hall, go through your portals, then put my other one in the control room and bam! We're free!" he finished proudly. Chell gaped at him. That was... actually a good, feasible plan. She nodded and moved past him, grabbing a computer box. With all her might, she flung it at the wall above it. She cracking sound rang out again and Chell saw a dent forming. She pointed to it frantically.

"It's...working. It's actually working!" Wheatley laughed happily and flung another computer. His aim was a little low and it flew directly into the grill, evaporating instantly. After at least two dozen computers flung at the wall, at least 10 evaporated in the process, there was a visible crack in the metal above the door. Chell set her gun on the catwalk and clambered up onto the rail by the door. The crack wasn't quite big enough to put a portal through. She curled her fingers inside of it and pulled. She bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut, pulling with all her strength. The metal gave a little underneath her. She yanked on it harder and it gave a little more. She gave it a final pull and the piece of metal in her hand was pulled off. She went flying backwards, landing directly on Wheatley. Both of them were knocked to the ground.

"Get the bloody hell off of me!" Wheatley shouted. Chell rolled off of him and crouched into a strike position, ready to attack him if he tried anything. He stood and brushed himself off.

"What are you doing?" he asked. Chell stood straight and grabbed her gun from the ground, ignoring him. She climbed back onto the railing and shot a portal through the gap. A yellow oval appeared. Through the gap, she watched Wheatley go through the grill and put a portal onto the wall. He went through Chell's yellow portal and a few moment later, the portal on the wall changed from a swirling mass of purple to a purple outline, the control room visible through it. Wheatley poked his head through.

"You can come through now!" he said. Chell hopped down and moved towards the grill. She heard a clicking behind her and stopped. Soon she had clambered back onto the railing again and hoisted herself up into the cargo box again. She scooped Pal and Prometheus into her arms and hugged them tightly. The turrets held a place in her heart now. She may never see them again and she wanted to make sure she said goodbye properly. She set them both down gently.

"Good luck out there Lady! Hope you take em all down!" Pal said, his optic dilating at her. She grinned at him. A small whisper came from her right.

"You'll find the answer." Chell turned to where Prometheus was blinking at her. She placed her hand on the turret's head and smiled smally. She patted the little turret and turned back to Pal. She leaned down and kissed him right above the optic.

"You're sweet, you're too sweet!" Pal said. She smiled and lowered herself out of the box. When only her head was above the turret's lines of sight, Pal called out.

"Hey, give em Hell Sweetheart!" he shouted. Chell nodded at him and dropped down. She walked through the emancipation grill and over to Wheatley's portal. With a a heavy sigh, she walked through it. Wheatley was sitting in a chair watching the Redemption lines. He turned to her and opened his mouth to speak.

"Oh good. You're back. I was wondering where you had run off to. For a moment I thought maybe you had gotten stuck in a doorway. Or had eaten a shard of metal that sliced up your internal organs and killed you" GLaDOS said. Wheatley frowned at being interrupted. He looked at Chell. She was glancing down at her stomach. Wheatley glared randomly around the room. He had no clue where the camera was.

"Are you implying she's fat? Because honestly woman look at her! She's tiny! Unhealthily tiny!" he said. Chell looked up in confusion.

"Did I say fat? I never said that. I have records of what I say and I never called her fat."

"But you were implying she's fat!" Wheatley retorted, his nose crinkling with his annoyance. Chell watched him, amused and slightly confused as to why he was sticking up for her.

"Orange, did I ever call you fat? No. I said generous. Which is a much better term." GLaDOS said. Chell put her arm self consciously across her stomach. Wheatley sighed and turned to her.

"Don't listen, she's a bloody liar. You're not fat or generous in the least." Wheatley told Chell. She just looked back, her poker face back in place across her features. She observed the lanky ginger man who was now in a heated argument with GLaDOS over Chell's weight. He said she looked too thin to him, but when Chell looked down at her own arms and torso, she thought she looked healthy. She wasn't too thin or too heavy, she had strong muscles and no bones poking out anywhere. Compared to Wheatley, she was in perfect health.

His jumpsuit hung off his frame loosely even though it was made for the average man of his height. Looking down at his arms, Chell saw he had very little muscle to speak of and when he bent his arm out straight, (like he was doing now, flailing angrily at the AI camera,) Chell could see where his two arm bones connected rather clearly. His cheekbones stuck out some and his complexion was still rather transparent insteady of a healthy color, like Chell's. His eyes were sunken and heavily bagged though they were still bright and animated. All in all, Chell thought he looked pretty sickly and abnormally thin. Had he eaten anything the time he'd been here? Chell hadn't seen him eat anything. The only thing she saw actually put into his was that opaque liquid GLaDOS had injected him with a shot of a few times in the first two test courses. She hadn't seen him drink anything either.

"This argument is pointless and you're an idiot. Moving on. You will now be sent back to the Aperture Science Cooperative Testing Team Dormitories. Blue, Orange, go back to the elevators. Try not to get stuck inside." GLaDOS said cheerily. Wheatley managed to get in one last jab at the computer before he marched off into the other room.

Chell scowled and practically threw herself into the elevator, crossing her arms in annoyance. The elevators flew upwards and the doors opened to let them out, instead of the floor dropping them out like usual. Chell stormed past Wheatley to the orange door and threw it open. She ignored the jug of water and the cardboard bar in the cubbie in the wall and dropped her portal gun on the ground. She yanked her longfall boots off and flung them at the wall. She threw herself facedown onto the bed.

To say she was mad was an understatement. She was furious. Furious at GLaDOS for not telling her what was going on, at Wheatley for throwing things at her and being a moron, at GLaDOS again for all the stupid fat jokes. Furious at GLaDOS for keeping her trapped in this hellish prison. She wanted answers. She wanted revenge. She wanted out. She wanted freedom. She wanted her Companion Cube and pre-wrapped cakes. She wanted bubbly canned liquid and comfy couches. She wanted to feel the sun on her face and the wind blowing around her.

Most of all, she craved to feel the rain falling down on her. To smell the scent of wet dirt and humidity and to hear the loud clap of thunder. She realized that she would probably never get to see any of those again. She'd never feel the rain again. She felt a wet patch on the bed below her face and turned on her side away from the glass wall. The tears flowed freely. She was miserable. All Chell had ever wanted was to leave this place behind and when she did, she was dragged right back. She was like a child's plaything. She was the doll, Aperture was the dollhouse, and GLaDOS was the little girl slowly tearing the doll's head off.

She was done. She couldn't take it here anymore. She had been dragged back twice. She would get out of the test tracks, find out some answers, take GLaDOS down (again) and run for it. And this time, she'd get out for good.

* * *

**Ok! So! Here we go with the thickening confusing plot that I still don't totally understand! Oh well, I'll figure it out eventually. Reviews are loved, read and always taken into consideration.**


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